Greg Tate's piece in the new Village Voice is the best take I've seen yet on Cold Mountain's near-complete avoidance of slavery as a topic for discussion.

My understanding is that the part of North Carolina where the film takes place would have been largely devoid of black folks anyway, and not necessarily ideologically tied to the institution of slavery. But the way that Minghella uses the few slaves and ex-slaves who show up in the story seems designed in itself to minimize them. You could argue that this is the film's mindscreen, reflecting a general inability of the film's characters to see blacks as real people, but I think it reveals an unwillingness on Minghella's part (I can't comment on what Frazier did since I haven't read his book) to engage with this story on a level — any level! — that might have helped give it some heft; hell, even the notoriously easy-to-impress Academy seems to think this lacks much in the way of a social conscience.

Like Tate, I count myself as a big fan of both The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, so I'm not just trying to beat up on Minghella; the film isn't loathsome in its shortcomings, but it is frustrating because the people who worked on it are so goddamned talented.

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fwiw, I have read the book, and I remember very little being made of the whole issue of slavery, and even less of slaves as an actual human presence in the story. Interesting, that.

Posted by: Dan Jardine at February 4, 2024 08:42 PM

I'm almost curious enough to read the damned book, since I found the premise behind Cold Mountain itself to be intermittently fascinating, but the movie itself to be, well, dull. My uninformed theory is that Cold Mountain the movie suffers mainly from an inability to replicate the internal monologue that is Cold Mountain the book. Since Minghella fails not only to put us inside Inman's head, but also to create a world around him that feels remotely credible in an exterior sense, it plays as movie-movie phony. Or at least that's the way it played to me.

Posted by: Bryant at February 4, 2024 10:01 PM

Hm, I read the book, Bryant, and I think at least some of the film's faults lie therein. I'm always down for a good innings, but I found the novel mind-crushingly boring, the prose cold, and the characters largely unsympathetic. I don't know why Minghella (a Brit, after all), was attracted to a story - for all its greater appeal - so quintessentially American.

Posted by: patrick at February 8, 2024 08:16 PM

I guess it was a "literary" novel that appealed to Minghella's pet themes, which -- on the evidence of at least this and [i]The English Patient[/i] -- have to do with love that knows no political boundaries etc. Plus, as evidenced most recently by Chris Martin's comments about the U.S. Presidential campaign at the Grammys Sunday night, isn't it often true that Brits take a keen interest in American politics and attitudes?

At any rate, sometimes I feel like I'm criticizing the movie simply for not being what I wanted it to be. But then I remember that not only is it not exactly what I wanted it to be, but it's also dull, heavy-handed and sporadically poorly acted. So maybe I'm overthinking it.

Posted by: Bryant at February 10, 2024 03:50 PM

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