Cold Mountain (2003)

Nicole Kidman is Ada Monroe, a Southern belle, who follows her ill preacher of a father from Charleston to the small community of Cold Mountain, North Carolina, where the clean country air is supposed to be better for his health.

She feels an almost immediate attraction to a young man named Inman (Jude Law),

He’s a man of few words. He’s a man who’s clumsy around her.

But the attraction is mutual. He’s so attracted to her that he’s far less jubilant than his comrades when war breaks out.

Four years later, he’s stuck in the trenches outside Petersburg.

Ada is still on Cold Mountain, struggling to survive now that her father has died.

She sends him a letter: Stop marching. Stop fighting. Come home.

After being seriously wounded after the Battle of the Crater, he attempts to do just that.

Fortunately, reinforcements have already arrived at the Monroe home in the form of Ruby Thewes (Renee Zellweger), a hardened young woman who plans to help Ada take care of herself.

Meanwhile, the biggest problem lurking on Cold Mountain isn’t Union troops.

It’s the Home Guard under the command of a vicious man named Teague.

His family owned most of the land around Cold Mountain at one point. He’s not above using the war to try to get it back.

Review:

A magnificent film, successful in telling a touching love story against the bleakest of backdrops, a Southern community crumbling under the weight of The Civil War.

Zellweger won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as Ruby, but she’s far from the only cast member to turn in a brilliant performance. Nicole Kidman is equally impressive as the young woman raised to be a lady, taught to do nothing practical and now paying the price for an upbringing that proves worthless in a time of hardship.

Upon the scenes likely to stick with you — our introduction to Ruby as she brings the neck of the rooster who’s been attacking Ada, the Home Guard’s assault on the Swanger farm to find a pair of deserters, and the plight of young mother named Sara, widowed by war, when Union soldiers show up looking for food.

One of the best Civil War films ever made.

Directed by:
Anthony Minghella

Cast:
Jude Law … Inman
Nicole Kidman … Ada Monroe
Renee Zellweger … Rudy Thewes
Eileen Atkins … Maddy
Brendan Gleeson … Stobrod Thewes
Donald Sutherland … Rev. Monroe
Ray Winstone … Teague
James Gammon … Esco Swanger
Kathy Baker … Sally Swanger
Natalie Portman … Sara

Score: Gabriel Yared

Runtime: 154 min.

Memorable lines:

Ada in a letter to Inman: “I find myself alone and at the end of my wits … My last thread of courage now is to put my faith in you. And to believe I will see you again. So, now, I say to you, plain as I can: If you are fighting, stop fighting. If you are marching, stop marching. Come back to me. Come back to me is my request.”

Rudy: “Ain’t no man better than me. Cause there ain’t no man around who ain’t old or full of mischief.”

Ada: “There’s the rooster. He’s the devil. I’m sure of it. Every time I got near him, he’s at me with his spurs. He’s Lucifer himself.”
Rudy: “I despise a flogging rooster.” She walks over to the rooster. “My name is Ruby Thewes. I know your name.” She breaks the rooster’s neck, then beheads it. “Let’s put him in a pot.”

Ruby: “My daddy, he’d walk 40 miles for liquor and not 40 inches for kindness.”

Ruby, about her dad: “He is so full of manure, that man. We could lay him in the dirt and grow another one, just like him.”

Ruby: “Every piece of this is man’s bullshit. They call this war a cloud over the land, but they made the weather. Then they stand in the rain and say, ‘Shit, it’s raining.”

Kathy Baker as Sally Swanger in Cold Mountain (2003)

James Gammon as Esco Swanger in Cold Mountain (2003)

Renee Zellweger as Rudy Thewes and Nicole Kidman as Ada Monroe in Cold Mountain (2003)

Natalie Portman as Sara in Cold Mountain (2003)

Donald Southerland as Rev. Monroe in Cold Mountain (2003)

Jude Law as Inman, on a long journey in Cold Mountain (2003)