Cold Mountain

Watched this because I wanted to see what kind of actor Jude Law was (Sherlock Holmes doens’t count…). Was surprised when I found out that Nicole Kidman (俺の嫁) was in it, and that Anthony Minghella, whose “The English Patient” I ENJOYED VERY MUCH, was the director and screenplay writer. Also surprised to see that Renée Zellweger won Best Supporting Actress for this film, so I was expecting nice things.

Anyways, this movie is basically a really long love story between two characters who, despite not really knowing each other, is filled with a really, really, really strong impression and longing for the other. It’s about the journey they’re making to see each other again after being thrown around by chaos in their world. Or something.

Despite being 2 hours and 34 minutes, which is pretty long, it didn’t feel at all long to me even if the dialogue was sparse (Jude Law’s character sucks at talking, but he’s really good at melting certain people staring), since there was lots of background music and A LOT OF EYE CANDY. This eye candy was not limited to only Law and Kidman’s faces, and were accented further by luscious scenery and other aesthetics. Seeing this movie made me feel like I went somewhere, seriously.

FFFFFFFFFFFFF

There was also a lot of really good dialogue, and despite the difficult setting, there was enough light-hearted moments to keep it from being too emo/boring/stupid/too srs bsns. This humour mostly came from Zellweger’s character, who was super natural at portraying the role, and did actually manage to steal a lot of scenes from Kidman.

Also, even though it’s a love story almost through and through, it wasn’t cheesy and lame at all, and I thought it was played out pretty plausibly and appropriately agonizingly. I could really sense the longing between the leads, and it’s great how just their expressions and actions can convey so much meaning. As with The English Patient, this was slow-paced and long, but another similarity is that both had a very strong cast, especially in Cold Mountain. Everyone did their role strongly and believably, and I couldn’t find any flaws with them. I was also surprised that Natalie Portman was in it, wao.

All in all, a really good movie in my opinion, and I usually despise stupid romance-y stuff. I could stomach this because it didn’t have pretentious or too much dialogue, and only has cheese in the right places. It was also set in an interesting setting which was sufficiently thought-provoking. 88/100