The story's pathos comes from the disproportionate intensity of their longing. They barely know each other, and their love is an attempt to conjure an idea of happiness in grim times.
Inman, wounded in the battle of Fredericksburg, steps out of the window of a squalid Virginia military hospital and undertakes a long inland trek toward home. Ada, after the death of her father (Donald Sutherland), must contend with a harsh lifestyle for which her cosseted upbringing has left her unsuited. To help Ada manage her father's sprawling farm, her neighbor, Sally (Kathy Baker), sends over a no-nonsense spitfire named Ruby (Renee Zellweger), instigating a friendship that becomes the film's central relationship.
Zellweger, wild-haired and ornery, clomps through the scenery like a migrant from Li'l Abner's Dogpatch. Her earthiness warms up Cold Mountain considerably, and her scenes with Kidman have a loose, improvisatory rhythm missing from much of the movie. They work together like a seasoned comedy team, and Minghella makes the most of their differences in temperament and appearance.
While Ada grapples with farm work and the unwelcome attentions of Teague (Ray Winstone), an officer in the Home Guard who terrorizes the people of Cold Mountain in the name of the faltering Confederate cause, Inman slogs through a landscape populated by figures out of old murder ballads and tall tales.
Law, a hint of mischief lingering around his tired eyes, meets up with a parade of Hollywood hillbillies, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi and Eileen Atkins. (Among the very few black people he sees is a silent, briefly glimpsed band of runaway slaves.) Alternating between these encounters and Kidman' s home-front stoicism, Cold Mountain unfolds in lyrical counterpoint.
Its awkward beginning -- a jumble of flashbacks, voice-overs and confusing combat scenes -- reveals the structural challenge Minghella faced in adapting the novel, which seesaws between the present and the past and includes numerous digressions and side narratives. Imitating it too faithfully would have killed the film's fragile momentum, but Minghella, working with the matchlessly resourceful editor Walter Murch, has tightened Frazier's ungainly tale while preserving its epic capaciousness.
The result is a mountain of honest, nourishing corn, a lavish evocation of simplicity that, for all its showy sophistication, has an appealing emotional directness. For all its sweep and scope and movie-star magic, Cold Mountain is studded with fine small moments and deft supporting performances, notably from Atkins, Portman and Brendan Gleeson, who plays Ruby's wayward, fiddle-playing father.
The final assault on the heartstrings is marred only by the inevitable sex scene, a concession to modern sensibilities that makes you long for the old days of Production Code repression, when instead of a few minutes of peekaboo montage and heavy breathing, Inman and Ada would have consummated their love with a blown-out candle, a closed door, and a few wispy clouds suggestively passing across the moon.
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