“Cold Mountain… soared in his mind as a place where all his scattered forces might gather.” –Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
When Charles Frazier’s debut novel Cold Mountain was first published in 1997, his story of a soldier’s search for home and love in the last days of the Civil War quickly received rhapsodic acclaim. Critics hailed the arrival of a major new voice in American literature, one that not only had mastered the art of compelling story-telling, but opened up an original view of America’s most transforming period in history, drawing a portrait of a society in chaos, and of a man and a woman yearning for a return to peace.
The novel takes place at a time when the deepest divisions – and fiercest battles – in America’s history were overcome on the way to what Abraham Lincoln called “the birth of new freedom.” It was a time when brothers fought brothers and lovers were torn from each other’s arms – in order to create a country that could never imagine doing so again. The savage war was coming to an end, but for soldiers, wives and Americans of every kind, survival remained uncertain, and the battle to begin a new and different future was still at hand. For many, it was a time of spiritual reconstruction, of questioning what is really of value in a human existence, and of rediscovering the primacy of family in American life.
Raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Charles Frazier grew up on stories of the Civil War passed down by his Great-Great-Grandfather and those of his Great-Great-Uncle, the real W.P. Inman, a Confederate soldier who indeed walked 300 miles home from a hospital in Virginia. Frazier was intrigued by the ways in which ordinary people – mountain farmers, backwoods Reverends, and even society women – were all caught up in the War’s crossfire, changing their very souls irrevocably. Whether the despair of soldiers fighting for a cause in which they didn’t believe, or the devastation and loneliness faced by the women, children and elders left behind, or the beauty of strangers who helped those they barely knew to survive, Frazier was drawn to these vital stories that have rarely been told.
He set out to write a Civil War novel unlike any other, one not focused on the usual famous battles and Generals, but on the trials and longings of ordinary Americans in a time of tumult. Frazier’s novel shared with other contemporary masterworks a moving evocation of American society undergoing massive change. He also unveiled — in transporting detail — a lost way of life, one that relied on an often treacherous and mercurial landscape, and one that was heightened by a true sense of intimacy with the earth itself. It became an epic adventure and love story that attracted readers of all ages and backgrounds around the world.
Newsweek praised the novel as “Astounding— a genuine romantic saga that attains the stature of literature.” The Raleigh News & Observer considered the book “As close to a masterpiece as American writing is going to come these days.” The novel spent over 45 weeks on the New York Times best seller list, received the coveted National Book Award for fiction and today is taught in schools and universities all across the country.
When director Anthony Minghella read Cold Mountain, he found the mythic story filled with both heartbreak and revelation – and his intense, personal reaction surprised the director. “The book appears to be a story about the Civil War, and I don’t necessarily have an interest in war stories. But I quickly realized it’s about so much more,” he says. “It’s about the return from war and the effects of war’s brutality and chaos on the world away from the battlefield, in the realm of families and friendships. I understood I was in territory that was very compelling — and utterly fresh.”
He continues: “Charles Frazier had refashioned Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ with a story about a man who needs to get home yet every conceivable obstacle in placed in his way. The character of Inman, whose name is not unlike Everyman, is put through a series of tests – he’s tested by hubris, by courage, by vanity, by romantic love, by his coarse desires and by his loyalty. Inman is on a physically extraordinary adventure, but he is also on spiritual journey.”
“And then there is another journey: the journey of Ada, the woman waiting at home for him. It is equally profound,” says Minghella. “Ada, a person of great privilege who knows nothing about how to survive in the real world, must in the course of the film learn to take care of herself, survive during wartime and become wise in the ways of nature. I would say that much as I identify with Inman, or that I project onto Inman what it would be like to be a warrior returning home, I also identify with Ada because of her transformation, through her friendship with Ruby, from an exclusively inner life to an outer life and becoming part of the land.”
Minghella could immediately envision Frazier’s epic tale as a motion picture. “The book itself makes an irresistible case for adaptation to the screen,” he notes. “It has an honorable hero, a journey, a purpose, a series of obstacles, a woman waiting with forbearance, and Cold Mountainitself, which stands in for a time and way of life that have been lost. At its heart the book has an intriguing, enduring question: Is it better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all?”
In adapting the screenplay, Minghella knew he would have to set out on his own uniquejourney and bring his own personal vision to Charles Frazier’s classic story. He also knew there are many dangers associated with adapting a widely beloved novel. He had done it before with another book so rich with language many thought it could not be translated to the screen, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, and surprised audiences and critics alike with his uniquely cinematic evocation of the novel’s sweeping themes.
Minghella’s screenplay based on Cold Mountain concentrated on the intertwined survival of Inman, Ada and Ruby – each driven to unexpected courage and strength by their love, friendship and longing for peace. The script ultimately earned the blessing of Charles Frazier, which was essential to the director. It also impressed producer Sydney Pollack, who says: “Anthony was able to make his adaptation completely his own without ever violating the author’s intent. In a way, he reimagined and re-dreamt the whole world of the novel in his screenplay. It has everything that both Anthony and I treasure: it’s a love story but it’s also an odyssey that tests its main characters in every possible way.”
Sums up Charles Frazier: “I think Cold Mountain is a meditation on what we fear and what we desire, on how we react to violence on a personal level and how we move away from violence towards peace. Inman’s trek is a journey towards his personal vision of peace, home and the life that you yearn for. These are not particularly time-bound things. The Civil War gave me a very concrete background for this story, but these things are always with us.”
“All you can choose to do is go on or not. But if you go on, it’s knowing you carry your scars with you.” – Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
From the beginning, Anthony Minghella committed himself to finding just the right cast for Cold Mountain’s intensely vivid heroes, heroines and villains. While it was vital to Minghella to capture an authentic sense of history and nature through locations and design, none of it would mean a thing unless the characters Charles Frazier had crafted came to life. The astonishing group of soldiers and survivors who people the novel had to be the very organic heart of the film.
“I spent months and months casting,” says Minghella.” “I always do it that way. I meet every actor myself, and spend time alone with each one. I put an enormous amount of energy into the casting process because it helps me learn about the kind of film I want to make— to ask why one actor will fit and another won’t and what that means. With Cold Mountain, because where we were casting what amounted to a collection of characters, I went even further, imagining each sequence in terms of whether or not all the faces were going to work with one another.”
Minghella says that this was especially true when considering the three main roles: Inman, Ada and Ruby. “It was impossible to decide who would play each of those characters without having a sense of all three, what the triangulation would be in the film,” Minghella explains. “I worked my way through various permutations so that depending on whether or not this particular person was going to be Inman, then that one could be a potential Ada, and then this one might be a potential Ruby. I circled round and round until I found the triangle that worked the best.”
Ultimately Minghella chose Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger as the embodiments of the story’s heart, mind and soul. Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman was cast as Ada Monroe, a well-educated, city-bred woman who has always been protected by her father, played by Donald Sutherland. In the wake of Reverend Monroe’s unexpected death, and her brand new love Inman’s departure for the battlefield, Ada finds herself utterly alone on the farm, in the middle of extreme danger, without the vaguest idea of how to fend for herself. Faced with fear of starvation, attack and the ever-increasing possibility that Inman will never return, the once bookish Ada must learn to live off the sweat of the land – and trust her most secret heart – as she befriends the gritty, self-reliant drifter Ruby.
Kidman was immensely gratified at being cast because she was deeply attracted to the role of Ada. “I read the book several years ago when it first came out and was entranced,” she recalls. “The prose is sensory, revealing and describes the inner life of both Inman and Ada brilliantly. I thought, how could you ever turn this into a movie? But Anthony Minghella was able to do so because he is a true poet. He took this magnificent novel and turned it into a screenplay with its own life.”
Kidman continues: “I also can’t remember the last time I encountered such an epic American love story. To me it’s a story that has something beautiful to say about love, hope and destiny – and I don’t think we’ve had a movie like this in quite some time, so to be a part of it is a real blessing. I think it is a very relevant story especially because of what it has to say about community, faith and believing in something deeply. ”
Kidman saw the role as an opportunity not only to revisit a vital moment in American history but to explore a more timeless journey of a woman’s personal transformation and will to survive. “Ada is a wonderful role for a woman,” she observes. “She goes from being a Southern belle who’s never been able to do anything practical to someone who learns to survive under the most terrible circumstances of war and privation. I also deeply love the theme of female friendship that develops in the story between Ada and Ruby. Anthony depicts their friendship as something very alive, something that not only helps each of them to survive but together to conquer their fears. It’s rare that you get two such wonderfully rich female roles in the same film.”
Ruby is a brazenly independent, wily drifter who speaks her piece and is wise to nature’s ways. She is clearly tough as nails, and often a source of humor – but in rescuing Ada from near defeat, Ruby begins to recognize her own long-suppressed need for human contact and family reconciliation. To play Ruby, the filmmakers chose Renee Zellweger, fresh from her entirely opposite role as a jazzy femme fatale in the Oscar-winning “Chicago.”
Like Kidman, Zellweger was a huge fan of Charles Frazier’s novel. “I read the book before it was even published,” she says. “I’m fortunate enough to have friends in the same social circles as the Fraziers in the Carolinas and so I got to see the manuscript. For me, it was thrilling to read something that’s both a stirring epic and gives such a rich account of that period of American history.”
Early on Zellweger was so taken by the book that she tried to help several independent filmmakers gain the rights to it. But Zellweger was absolutely thrilled when it turned out that Anthony Minghella was going to direct the film and even more excited when he offered her the role of Ruby. “Anthony is such a brilliant mind, and I was so impressed by his very strong sense of responsibility to maintain the authenticity and beauty of the book,” she says. “As for Ruby, I love this girl. She’s a survivor, very much of the earth, as Anthony says.”
For Zellweger, getting into Ruby’s character meant an exciting chance to fully abandon herself to the rhythms of nature and her more primal, earthy side, one rarely seen on screen before. Playing Ruby also meant undergoing her own internal journey. Explains the actress: “I think of Ruby as someone whose hands are always in the dirt. She knows how to put the seed in the earth and what it’s going to produce in the end and when to harvest it. She knows about the moon, the sun, the seasons and what the winds mean. Everything to her is about getting things done and survival. But, until she meets Ada, emotion doesn’t play a role in her life – she’s learned how not to feel things. For me, it was quite fascinating to play someone like that as they open up and change. Ruby begins to use her imagination, to express herself— and I think it’s really beautiful to see what these two women teach each other and how they grow together.”
Anthony Minghella observes: “Ada discovers the ground through Ruby and Ruby discovers the air through Ada. When I met Nicole I saw this extremely interesting, cerebral woman who has something very grounded about her which surfaces as Ada changes. The was also true for Renee, in that while she is extremely grounded, she also has the quality of a dreamer with a whimsical inner life that later comes the fore in Ruby’s character.”
Having decided on these two formidable actresses for Ada and Ruby, Minghella set out to find his Inman – a character who, like an American version of Homer, heads off on a odyssey across his changing times and country. Driven by fervent memories of the first flush of love and a compelling need to return and rescue Ada, Inman faces danger and doubts of every kind, and comes to a crossroads that changes his very view of life.
In his search to find Inman, Minghella kept coming back to his friend Jude Law – especially because their collaboration on “The Talented Mr. Ripley” had proved so fruitful. “I’d had a wonderful experience with Jude on ‘Ripley,’ and found him a pleasure to work with, willing, very smart, and generous,” says Minghella. “My dialogue with Jude was not ‘can you play this role?’ Of course I knew he could. It was whether he had the will to endure what anyone playing Inman would have to endure. And as we spoke I saw that he did, and it was tremendously exciting. I was lucky with Jude in ‘Ripley.’ It was the explosion of somebody fresh in a film, a discovery for so many people. I think the discovery here will be to see him as a romantic leading actor who do can anything on screen.”
For his part, Law knew he wanted to play Inman as soon as he read the screenplay. “I saw immediately that Inman is a role that any actor would die to play,” he says. “He is very much an Everyman, the eyes and ears of the audience. At first he’s caught up in the excitement and jingoism of the Civil War, believing in the cause of the South. But after enduring the horrors of the war, he embarks on this physical and spiritual journey during which he learns that the only thing worth living for is love, and the love of the woman he is desperately trying to get back to.”
As filming began, Minghella was impressed with Law’s strength of will. “Jude understood that in the course of making the film he was going to have to endure nearly as much as Inman does,” Minghella says. “We see him buried alive and emerging from the muck not once but twice. He’s hunted, burned, shot at, wounded, tortured, dragged along in chains, drugged, doped, and faces both death and temptation, all while enduring every possible kind of privation.”
“I was prepared for the rigors of the role and happy to do anything it took,” Law comments. “Ultimately this is a film about people in desperate situations in a time of great hardship and spiritual turmoil. But I also came to understand that it’s a story about life, about finding a reason to live, and about how love is the ultimate goal.”
In addition to Kidman, Zellweger and Law, the long list of unforgettable characters who enter the lives of Ada, Ruby and Inman provided opportunities for numerous first rate actors to appear in COLD MOUNTAIN. To fill these vital roles, Minghella decided to go after leading actors for what normally might be considered supporting roles.
He explains: “We had heavyweights in the ring, and we didn’t want to put a bantam weight to fight opposite them, so to speak. I was looking for people who— to put it crudely— could punch back as hard as Jude or Nicole or Renee, and I saw the opportunity to cast the film in a way that I might never be able to do again, which is, say, to call Donald Sutherland for the role of Ada’s father, or Eileen Atkins to play Maddy the goat woman, or Philip Seymour Hoffman for the disgraced minister Veasey, or Natalie Portman as Sara, the helpless farmwoman alone in her cabin with her sickly child, or Giovanni Ribisi for Junior, the backwoodsman who keeps a bevy of women and brood of children in his shack.”
Call them Minghella did, along with other actors who together comprise one of the most exciting ensembles ever assembled for a film, among them: Ray Winstone (“Sexy Beast”) as Teague, the cruel head of the Home Guard who hunts down deserters and pursues Ada with frightening zeal; Brendan Gleeson (“Gangs of New York”) as Stobrod, the iterant fiddler who turns out to be Ruby’s father; Kathy Baker (“The Cider House Rules”) and James Gammon (“Life, Or Something Like It”) as Esco and Sally Swanger, Ada’s Cold Mountain neighbors who oppose the war; Charlie Hunnam (“Nicholas Nickleby”) as Bosie, a dark angel who is Teague’s murderous associate; Ethan Suplee (“Remember the Titans”) as Pangle, Stobrod’s goodhearted but simple musical companion; Jena Malone (“Life As A House”) as the Ferry Girl on the Cape Fear River; Melora Walters (“Magnolia”) as Junior’s lusty wife Lila; Jack White of the rock group White Stripes in his film debut as Georgia, a musician who travels with Stobrod and Pangle; and Lucas Black (“Sling Blade”) as Oakley, a youthful recruit from Cold Mountain Town’s Civil War regiment.
Summarizes producer Albert Berger: “The film encompasses such a large canvas with that we were truly blessed to have the participation not only of seasoned veterans but so many of today’s most interesting, wonderful young performers.”
Directed by: Anthony Minghella
Starring: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Kathy Baker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jena Malone, Natalie Portman
Screenplay by: Anthony Minghella
Production Design by: Dante Ferretti
Cinematography by: John Seale
Film Editing by: Walter Murch
Costume Design by: Carlo Poggioli, Ann Roth
Set Decoration by: Francesca Lo Schiavo
MPAA Rating: R for violence and sexuality.
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: December 12, 2003
