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Backing Into Number One - "Cold Mountain"

by Jay Amicarella

I used to have favorite movies when I was a kid.  When you haven't lived that long, and haven't therefore seen many films, it's not that hard to choose favorites.  When I was ten, my three favorite movies were John Wayne's 'The Alamo,' 'The Three Hundred Spartans,' and 'The Journey to the Center of the Earth' with James Mason and Pat Boone. Later in life, when you have a goodly number of movies under your belt, say in your twenties, you stop having a top three or top five and start categorizing:  five best westerns, my top three monster movies, and so on.

'Picnic'  Kim Novak & William Holden

If you're an avid movie watcher, you stop doing even that when you reach your thirties.  You've just seen too many, loved too many, hated too many, to grapple with a 'best' or 'worst' list.  Still, in the back of your mind, unbidden, there lurks an all-time top fifteen or twenty films that have survived the test of time and the vagaries of your evolving tastes.  'Picnic,' 'The Bridge on the River Kwai,' 'The Searchers,' 'To Have and Have Not,' 'Rear Window,' 'Stalag 17', 'West Side Story', 'The Man Who Would Be King,' 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,' John Huston's 'The Unforgiven' are always among these, shifting places from three to seven to five...you refuse to ever let a film occupy the elusive number one slot:  It's just too important a place to actually have to name a film.  Other movies pop in and out of this nebulous list as you see more new candidates, or as your tastes for genres expand, as when I 'discovered' Japanese films like 'Ran' and French flicks like 'La Balance', still one of the best gangster movies out there.  Anyway, whenever someone would ask me (and they didn't know me very well, obviously), "What's your favorite movie of all time?"  I would usually just look at them in irritation and rattle off five or six titles without thinking, and turn away.

All this a wordy preamble to the subject at hand, how recently one movie emerged to the forefront of my thoughts, as, on re-viewing it, for I think the fifth time, I idly realized it fit all my exacting requirements to take its place as my favorite movie of all time.

I'm talking about Anthony Minghella's "Cold Mountain," based on Charles Frazier's award-winning novel of life on the home front during the Civil War.  A beautiful, haunting, meticulously crafted feast for the eyes, it has earned its place  atop the thousands of films I've seen throughout my lifetime.  How does ‘Cold Mountain’ satisfy all my criteria for the best of the best?

First, it is primarily an adventure, my favorite genre of film.  It’s male protagonist, Inman. undertakes a grueling Odyssey on foot to be reunited with his sweetheart, Ada Monroe, near the close of hostilities between the North and South.

Second, like most of my other all-time favorite movies, it is adapted from a book.  I’d read the novel ‘Cold Mountain’ a couple of year’s before the movies’ release, and, at first, I was dismayed at the thought of what Hollywood might do to this wonderful story.   My fears were groundless; I loved the movie version when I first saw it in the theater, and it stayed with me for days, even weeks after that first viewing.  I couldn’t get it out of my head, which is number three in my requirements for Numero Uno.

Fourth, It has great action scenes.  Although there is only one major battle represented, it’s a doozy of a set piece, highlighting the futility and horror of war like no other film set in this time period.  Five, it has a romance that approaches greatness.

The shy, awkward love between the practically wordless Inman and the beautiful, ingenuous Ada is touching, and utterly real as handled by two gifted professionals like Jude Law and Nicole Kidman.

Six, all the supporting characters are rich with depth and nuance, from Rene Zellweger’s Oscar-winning turn as Ruby, to the matchless Kathy Baker as Mrs. Swanger, James Gammon (Is there anyone out there with a speaking voice like his?) as Mr. Swanger, to Brendan Gleesan’s Starbrod Thewes; and absolutely wondrous cameo performances contributed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lucas Black (Does he die young in every movie he’s in?), the marvelous Eileen Atkins, and the one that packs an extraordinary emotional wallop, drawn by Natalie Portman.

 Seven, it is also a first-rate study of friendship.  I love movies like ‘Gallipoli,’ and ‘The Mighty,’ where the aspects of friendship are explored.  Ada and Ruby, an unlikely pair of young women, one genteel, the other po’ white trash, grow to like, appreciate, and finally love each other as they struggle to survive a bleak existence on the war’s home front.  

One of my main criteria for a good movie has always been the background music, ever since I saw, and heard, ‘The Big Country,’ scored by Jerome Moross, as a child.  Big, sweeping soundtracks from the likes of Jerry Goldsmith, or sly, beguiling ones from composers like Bernard Hermann, for me, make the movie, as much as the acting or cinematography.  And ‘Cold Mountain’ is no exception.  Featuring heart-breakingly beautiful vocals from my favorite female singer of all time, Alison Krauss, legendary musician and producer T-Bone Burnett fills the landscape with music that matches the period and the story perfectly.      Eight.

 Nine, there is humor that is plot-driven, deriving from the characters’ all too human foibles, and is therefore genuine, and giving well-earned emotional breaks from this sometimes tortuous  journey.

 Ten, y’all know I’m a sucker for any book or movie that offers a single father/single daughter relationship, and ‘Cold Mountain’ has two, Ada and her kind and gentle minister father, nicely underplayed by Donald Sutherland.  And the flip side, the stormy, funny pair, Ruby, and her itinerant Daddy, Starbrod Thewes.   

 Finally, and this is no small requirement from a stickler like me, what the people in this story do, and what they say, is accurate to the period in history it represents.  No women spouting 1990’s feminism disguised as loquaciousness.  If a character like Ruby Thewes is outspoken, it is still confined to the social mores and strictures of the 1860’s South United States.  And there are no slaves offering up self-serving liberal, historical hindsight, just because some producer’s nephew felt it ‘needed to be said.’

 So, why all this verbiage nine years after the release of ‘Cold Mountain?’ 

 Like I said, it just kind of snuck up on me after watching it again the other night.  And it occurred to me that there still might be some of you out there who haven’t seen it yet, and might be encouraged to put it in your Netflix queue, or pick up the paperback, after reading these musings.  There are worse ways to spend your time…

 

 

Aurora Hobby Kits - 2001: A Space Odyssey

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My Favorite Abutment - Rita Dancing

May The 4th Be With You

Smack You Upside The Head - Movie Smackdown Now On Facebook!

Our good friend (and high school classmate) Bryce Zabel has ported his Movie Smackdown website over to Facebook for some social loving. Fellow Wheezer Jay Amicarella has written some Smackdowns for Bryce's site. be sure to checkout the site for great movie reviews, film opinions and cinema insight - plus the final movie SMACKDOWN! results.

Christmas Countdown - 3 Days

Ho! Ho! Ho! It's Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It's hard to imagine that someone was able to actually get this film produced and distributed into theaters, but indeed, it hit the screens on November 14, 1964. It usually makes the "Worst Movies" lists. Another claim to fame is that the film features a pre-teen Pia Zadora as 'Girmar', one of the Martian children.

This Dump Is Closed On Thanksgiving

While it's not one of my favorites, the tune does get stuck in your head. And it seems to resurface around this time of year, somehow about or on Thanksgiving Day.

(imagine hearing a strumming guitar)
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice)
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in, it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

Guthrie's song about his adventures on Thanksgiving Day 1965, which he turned into a song in 1967, which was then made into a movie in 1969, Alice's Restaurant has become a Thanksgiving icon to a 60's generation who knows about littering, war protesting, bureaucracy, the draft, Group W, $50 fines, American blind justice, and the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

PS: Today Arlo Guthrie will perform on a float during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (excepting Alice).

Horrible Casting Mistakes - Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi

"Miss Go-Right-ry, I protest!!"

Ah, those silly, buck-toothed Asians, with their funny tempers and hilarious mispronunciations of the simplest english...

Don't get me wrong, I like 1961's "Breakfast at Tiffany's". Delicious Audrey Hepburn changed forever what is sexy to me in a woman. She was enchanting, witty, her speaking voice still gives me the warm fuzzies, and to hear her wistfully sing "Moon River" from a New York City balcony is close to Heaven. But it is not a perfect movie, by any means. Its biggest sin is the perpetuation of the Gook Myth by none other than Mickey Rooney, one of Hollywood's most beloved and respected sons. Wearing enormous false buck teeth (The better to chew the scenery with, my dear) and oversized glasses, he put Anglo-Asian relations back about twenty years.

The film's director is Blake Edwards of "Pink Panther" and "Victor/Victoria" fame. What the hell was he thinking when he cast Rooney in one of the most blatantly racist roles in movie history?' Not since The Shiftless Negro Afraid of His Own Shadow of the 1930's has a group of people been so maligned. Was this another Pearl Harbor payback, Blake? Did a gang of Orientals take your lunch money when you were a kid? I can't explain how a bittersweet comedy/drama that featured a sad, touching performance by Buddy Ebsen in a supporting role also includes the hateful performance by Rooney. It just doesn't fit with the rest of the film.

And it brings me to one of my well-worn, personal-favorite soapboxes: Don't you just love it when Hollywood tries to teach us lessons that they think we need to learn, when it is in fact, HOLLYWOOD who needs the education? Their 'How dare you be prejudiced!' lesson, for example. The same folks who are responsible for Step'nFetchit, that pioneer of white/black understanding, routinely chastise us for our narrow-mindedness when it comes to race relations. The very people responsible for the belittling treatment of women, Indians, the British, and yes, Asians of all persuasions, are outspoken, stalwart defenders of the downtrodden, now that it suits their purposes to do so. For hypocrisy of a high order, dial a number with a Burbank or Beverly Hills prefix. posted by Jay Amicarella