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Starring: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Kathy Baker, James Gammon, Brendan Gleeson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Hunnam, Jena Malone, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi, Donald Sutherland
Directed by: Anthony Minghella
Based on the well known novel by Charles Frazier the story follows Inman, played by Jude Law, a wounded confederate soldier who is on a perilous journey home to his mountain community, hoping to reunite with his prewar sweetheart, Ada, played by Nicole Kidman.
1860s America -- In a country torn in two by war, it will take an extraordinary journey for people to come together as one. This journey is at the heart of COLD MOUNTAIN, Charles Frazier’s National Book Award-winning novel about love, friendship, nature, survival and the changing of America at the end of the Civil War, and now a motion picture directed by Academy Award-winner Anthony Minghella (“The English Patient”) and starring a cast headed by Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger.
COLD MOUNTAIN follows the intertwined paths of three people equally uprooted by war, three people whose physical and spiritual survival comes to depend entirely on one another. First, there is the Confederate soldier Inman (Jude Law) who, wounded in battle, fights his way home to the woman he loves – crossing a nation at war with itself. As he treks towards his beloved Ada (Nicole Kidman), driven by memories, Inman encounters slaves and rebels, fends off soldiers and bounty hunters and finds unexpected friends and dangerous enemies at every turn.
In a parallel journey of faith and newfound bravery, Ada’s road is no easier as this once well-bred, sheltered woman must take on a perilous world alone, bereft of companionship or knowledge of the outside world, and protect her father’s farm from ruin and attack. Rescue arrives for Ada in the unlikely form of a feisty drifter named Ruby (Renee Zellweger), who becomes an equal part of the story as she teaches Ada about strength, self-reliance and an astonishing natural world Ada has never known.
Now, as they come ever closer to one another, Inman, Ada and Ruby weave a story about the longing for home after being in the wilderness, the longing for peace after the brutality of war, and the longing for love and family at the heart of the American experience.
COLD MOUNTAIN is directed by Anthony Minghella and written by Minghella from Charles Frazier’s novel. The film is produced by Academy Award winner Sydney Pollack, William Horberg, Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa. Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Donald Sutherland, Ray Winstone, Brendan Gleeson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Giovanni Ribisi, Natalie Portman, Kathy Baker, James Gammon, Eileen Atkins, Charlie Hunnam, Jack White, Jena Malone, Lucas Black and Ethan Suplee.
Minghella reunites on COLD MOUNTAIN with his Academy Award winning production team from “The English Patient” which includes: director of photography John Seale, editor Wal frter Murch and costume designer Ann Roth, all of whom also worked on Minghella’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” They are joined on this production by six-time Academy Award-nominated production designer Dante Ferretti.
DISCOVERING COLD MOUNTAIN: THE NOVEL AND SCREENPLAY
“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 Mountain itself, 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 unique journey 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.”
Release Date: December 25th 2003 (wide).
Runtime: 153 minutes
MPAA Rating: R (for violence and sexuality)
Box Office: $95,633,000 (US total)
Distributor: Miramax Films
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