Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain tells a simple love story, but dresses it up in classical garb so it seems far weightier than it is.
In director Anthony Minghella's hands it becomes even grander, more epic and more sweeping.
Minghella's film is a towering achievement of style over substance, glorious to look at and powerful to experience.
Set in the last years of the American Civil War, Cold Mountain is the story of Ada Monroe (Nicole Kidman), the prime minister's daughter who falls in love with Inman (Jude Law), a humble farmer in the idyllic Cold Mountain region of North Carolina.
Their love is as pure as it is sudden.
On the day Inman leaves for war, they kiss passionately for a few seconds. That is the extent of their physical passion, but the desire they have felt for each other and continue to do so is as overpowering and all-consuming as that of any of Shakespeare's lovers.
Cold Mountain is told first in flashbacks and then through flash betweens.
Inman is on the battlefield.
He can only tolerate the horrors of war by thinking back on his few encounters with Ada. It is his memory of her that saves him from going insane.
Because she is so ill-equipped to handle adversity or physical labour, Ada suffers her own tragedies back on Cold Mountain.
Eventually in one of her letters she begs Inman to forsake his duty and return to save her and her farm.
From this point on, the film switches between Inman's journey to reach Cold Mountain and Ada's struggle to keep from losing the farm.
Frazier used Homer's epic poem The Odyssey as the basis for Inman's journey.
Like the Greek hero Odysseus, Inman is trying to get back to the woman and land he loves but, at every turn, he meets challenges that only his determination and his love for Ada could possibly surmount.
Ada's saviour is the feisty drifter Ruby Thewes (Renee Zellweger) who arrives on her doorstep announcing she will help reclaim the land if Ada treats her as an equal not a servant.
Zellweger arrives not a second to early. She is the comic relief this bleak, overly-melodramatic story desperately needs.
There is a gutsy energy to Zellweger's performance that beautifully contrasts the emotionally wrought performances of Kidman and Law.
More importantly, Zellweger is able to show the pain and sorrow Ruby experiences despite her outward show of callous disdain for anything but the land.
Law's performance is a triumph of subtle acting. His eyes become the mirrors of Inman's soul and that soul is as troubled, weary and torn a landscape as America itself.
When Inman meets the young widow (Natalie Portman) it's his pitying stare even more than her tears and pleas that tell us how much the war has taken from her.
Law also shows what an immense toll the war has taken on Iman's body.
Kidman has the thankless job of remaining beautiful and ethereal for the entire film. Ada is an uninteresting character because her struggles pale beside those of Inman and Ruby.
Like Titanic and Minghella's own The English Patient, Cold Mountain is a simple love story elevated to epic proportions because it is set against an event of profound magnitude.
(This film is rated R)
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