Cold Mountain (film)

• 1. Introduction

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  Cold Mountain opens with a scene it insists on getting slightly wrong on purpose. The Battle of the Crater actually began at 4:44 in the morning, with the detonation of a mine, but the film reimagines the attack unfolding in broad daylight. That small departure sits inside a much bigger story.

  Anthony Minghella wrote and directed the film, adapting it from Charles Frazier's bestselling 1997 novel. Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, and Renée Zellweger lead the cast. Supporting roles go to Eileen Atkins, Brendan Gleeson, Kathy Baker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Jack White, Giovanni Ribisi, Donald Sutherland, and Ray Winstone.

  At its center is a wounded deserter from the Confederate army. He flees near the end of the American Civil War to reach the woman he loves. The production itself crossed borders, built by companies in Italy, Romania, and the United States.

  Miramax Films released it theatrically on the 25th of December 2003. It became a critical and commercial success, grossing over $173 million worldwide. At the 76th Academy Awards, it collected seven nominations, including Best Actor for Law, and Zellweger won Best Supporting Actress.

  How a story built around one man's walk home ballooned into an international production is one question. What it cost the people who made it is another.

• 2. Inman's Long Road Back

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  North Carolina secedes from the Union on the 20th of May 1861, and the young men of Cold Mountain enlist in the Confederate States Army. Among them is Inman, a carpenter who has fallen for Ada Monroe. She is the preacher's daughter, who came from Charleston, South Carolina, to care for her father. War interrupts their courtship, but they share a first kiss the day Inman leaves for battle, and Ada promises to wait.

  Three years pass before Inman fights in the Battle of the Crater and survives. He comforts a dying acquaintance from Cold Mountain while fellow soldier Stobrod Thewes plays a tune on his fiddle. Wounded later in a skirmish, Inman lies near death in a hospital. There, a nurse reads him a letter in which Ada pleads for him to come home.

  Inman recovers and deserts, beginning a long trek back toward Cold Mountain. Along the way he meets the corrupt preacher Veasey and stops him from drowning his pregnant, enslaved victim. Exiled from his parish, Veasey joins Inman's journey. They meet a young man named Junior and share dinner with his family, but Junior betrays them to the Confederate Home Guard. Veasey and the other deserters are killed in a skirmish with Union cavalry, and Inman is left for dead.

  An elderly hermit finds Inman and nurses him back to health. Later, Inman meets a grieving young widow named Sara and her infant son, Ethan, and stays the night at her cabin. The next morning, three Union soldiers arrive demanding food and hold Ethan hostage. When they try to rape Sara, Inman and Sara are forced to kill all three.

  Sara and Ethan do not appear again in Inman's story, but their cabin marks his last violence before Cold Mountain.

• 3. The Women Of Black Cove

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  By the time Inman treks toward home, Ada's father has died. That leaves her with no money and little means to run the family farm at Black Cove. She survives on the kindness of neighbors, especially Esco and Sally Swanger, who eventually send for Ruby Thewes to help. Ruby, an experienced farmer and Stobrod's daughter, joins Ada, and together they bring Black Cove back to working order, becoming close friends.

  Ada keeps writing letters to Inman, hoping they will reunite and renew their romance. She has several tense encounters with Captain Teague, the leader of the local Home Guard, who covets both Ada and her property. Teague and his men kill Esco, then torture Sally to force her deserter sons out of hiding before killing them as well. Ada and Ruby rescue Sally, who survives the ordeal traumatized and rendered mute.

  The women celebrate Christmas with Stobrod, who arrives in Cold Mountain with fellow deserters and musicians Pangle and Georgia. While the group camps in the woods one night, Teague and the Home Guard corner Stobrod and Pangle as Georgia secretly watches. Pangle inadvertently reveals that they are deserters, and the Guard shoots both men. Georgia escapes and warns Ruby and Ada, who find Pangle dead and Stobrod badly wounded.

  The women and Stobrod take shelter in an abandoned Cherokee camp while Ada hunts for food. There she is reunited with Inman, finally back in Cold Mountain, and the two return to camp to spend the night together. Heading home afterward, Ada and Ruby are surrounded by Teague and his men, who tortured Georgia to learn their whereabouts. Inman arrives, and in the gunfight that follows, Teague and most of his posse are killed. Inman chases down Bosie, Teague's lieutenant, and the two exchange fast draws. Bosie is killed, but Inman is mortally wounded, and Ada finds and comforts him as he dies in her arms.

  Years later it emerges that Ada and Inman's night together produced a daughter, Grace Inman. Ruby, meanwhile, has married Georgia and had two children of her own. With Stobrod and Sally, the extended family gathers to celebrate Easter together at Black Cove.

  Grace would grow up on the same farm her mother had fought to keep running.

• 4. A Budget Spirals Upward

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  In 1997, United Artists bought the rights to Cold Mountain for Anthony Minghella to write and direct, with Sydney Pollack producing. MGM and United Artists then struck a deal with Miramax Films to produce eight films together, sharing the profits between the two studios. Historical painter Don Troiani signed on as the production's historical advisor.

  As the script developed, the project's scope grew from a period love story budgeted around $40 million into a far larger epic. The budget eventually climbed to nearly $120 million. Minghella struggled to find American landscapes that could still pass for towns from the 19th century.

  Tom Cruise, married to Nicole Kidman at the time, wanted to play Inman, but the studio would not meet his $20 million fee demand. To bring costs down, production shifted to Romania, and principal photography began on the 10th of July 2002. During filming, in October 2002, MGM pulled out of the project entirely.

  Executive producer Harvey Weinstein was ready to cancel the shoot, but Minghella was already deep into pre-production. Weinstein instead agreed to fund the $80 million project, after his company received a $10 million tax break.

  That tax break, more than the studio's original $40 million pitch, was what finally got Cold Mountain made.

• 5. Standing In For Appalachia

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  Cold Mountain, the real peak the film is named for, sits inside North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest, in Haywood County. Despite that, most of the film was shot in Romania, with additional scenes filmed in Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

  The move to Romania reflected a wider trend: a growing number of Hollywood productions were shifting to Eastern Europe to cut costs. In Transylvania specifically, fewer paved roads and power cables left the landscape looking less marked by modern life than the Appalachians themselves.

  Getting that landscape onto screen, and then into a finished film, would fall to an editor working with unusually modest tools.

• 6. An Unlikely Cutting Room

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  Walter Murch edited Cold Mountain using Apple's Final Cut Pro, software that sold for under $1,000, running on several off-the-shelf PowerMac G4 computers. For a film with a budget this size, that was a striking departure. Big-budget productions typically relied on far more expensive Avid editing systems.

  Murch's approach marked a broader turnaround for the editing industry. His work on the film was documented in a 2005 book titled Behind the Seen. The book's full title continues: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema.

  That book turned an editing choice made to save money into a case study other filmmakers would study for years.

• 7. Reviews, Rankings, and Scrutiny

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  In the United States and Canada, Cold Mountain earned $95.6 million, with another $77.4 million coming from other territories. Harvey Weinstein had said the film would break even if it reached $135 million. It opened with $14.5 million, finishing third at the box office that weekend. The second weekend brought in $11.7 million, and the third $7.9 million, with the film finishing fourth on both occasions.

  Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave Cold Mountain an average grade of B+, on a scale running from A+ to F. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four. He wrote that it "evokes a backwater of the Civil War with rare beauty, and lights up with an assortment of colorful supporting characters." Time critic Richard Corliss called it "a grand and poignant movie epic about what is lost in war and what's worth saving in life." He added that it was also "a rare blend of purity and maturity, the year's most rapturous love story." In his movie guide, Leonard Maltin gave the film three and a half stars out of four. He wrote that it "captures both the grimness of battle and the starkness of life on the home front in the South." He concluded the film was "meticulously crafted" with "first-rate performances all around."

  Cold Mountain landed on many critics' year end top ten lists for 2003. Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post and Megan Lehmann of the New York Post both ranked it first. Jonathan Foreman, also of the New York Post, placed it second, while Ruthie Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle ranked it third. Richard Corliss of Time and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone both placed it fifth. Lou Lumenick of the New York Post and Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader both ranked it seventh. Mike Clark of USA Today and Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe both placed it eighth. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times included it in his top ten, listed alphabetically rather than ranked.

  Scholars of Appalachian history also reviewed Cold Mountain's portrayal of North Carolina's mountainous western region during the Civil War. Their interest stemmed from the influence popular media has on how Appalachian people, particularly those from the southern mountains, are perceived nationally and worldwide. Opinions varied, but the consensus held that the film's historical context was close to established scholarship. One scholar wrote that the film should "provide so unflinching a portrayal of the bleak and unsettling realities of a far less familiar version of the Civil War, but one that would be all too recognizable to thousands of hardscrabble southern men and women who lived through it."

  Kenneth Turan's inclusion, alongside many other critics' year-end lists, placed Cold Mountain among 2003's most decorated award-season contenders before a single ceremony had taken place.

• 8. Sacred Harp and Scarlet Tide

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  T Bone Burnett produced Cold Mountain: Music from the Motion Picture. He had held the same role on the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? That earlier album, largely old-time and folk with limited radio play, still achieved commercial success and won a Grammy, inviting comparisons between the two soundtracks. Burnett brought in musician and scholar Tim Eriksen to teach the film's performers Sacred Harp singing, which features prominently throughout the soundtrack.

  Jack White of the White Stripes, who also appears in the film as Georgia, contributed songs alongside Elvis Costello and Sting. Costello's "The Scarlet Tide" and Sting's "You Will Be My Ain True Love" were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Both featured vocals from bluegrass singer Alison Krauss. Gabriel Yared's Oscar-nominated score appears on the album across four tracks, totaling about fifteen minutes of music.

  Cold Mountain's awards recognition did not stop at the Academy Awards; nominations followed at the 57th British Academy Film Awards, the 61st Golden Globe Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Critics' Choice Awards. Nominated categories at the BAFTAs included John Seale's cinematography and Dante Ferretti's production design. Costume work by Ann Roth and Carlo Poggioli was also nominated. So was the sound work credited to Eddy Joseph, Ivan Sharrock, Walter Murch, Mike Prestwood Smith, and Matthew Gough. At the Golden Globes, the film itself was nominated for best drama. Minghella was nominated for direction and screenplay, and Law and Kidman for their lead performances. Zellweger was nominated for her supporting role, and Yared for his score. Sting's song "You Will Be My Ain True Love" was nominated as well. The Screen Actors Guild nominated Zellweger for her supporting performance, and the Critics' Choice Awards recognized the film alongside Kidman, Zellweger, and Yared's score.

  That blend of Sacred Harp harmonies and songs by White, Costello, and Sting still sets the soundtrack apart from most films of its kind.