Just saw the movie of ‘Cold Mountain’. Wept many buckets. Therefore a good movie…
I say that in spite of scenes of gross, unnecessarily large-scale violence in the first 30 minutes that, what’s worse, were accompanied by truly terrible and “theatrical” music. Made me long for “Saving Private Ryan”, where the violence was stomach-churning but much more effective because it was NOT all grand-standish and orchestrated like some grisly version of a Cecil B. De Mille masterpiece.
In fact, since I’d been writing about real violence all day I couldn’t take it, and shielded my eyes from pollution by the cinematic version until Lorna could tell me it was okay to look again. After that, the movie went from strength to strength.
True, I did find it an interesting moral challenge to have the director draw us into the bucolic lifestyle and internal social goings-on of that strongly pro-Confederate community at the beginning. (Like setting a similar kind of movie inside Bavaria in the later days of Nazism, perhaps?)
Certainly, it would have been better from my perspective if we had been shown even one whiff of the very present violence against, and violation of, the enslaved black people on which communities like Cold Mountain, NC, were built at that time. (Did you know that there was then and still is today a quite vibrant and deep-rooted Quaker community in North Carolina? It would have been an interesting addition to the story if there had been any presence of those folks, who by then were taking very courageous stands against both the institution of slavery and the hideous Confederate war effort.)
Anyway, as the movie continued, its message became ever more strongly anti-war. And just as the book does, it followed very closely the feelings in the community as they turned from gung-ho jingo-ism re the war effort toward a sullen and bitter understanding of the huge, huge human costs of war.
That’s why I say it’s a great movie.
There is even a truly odious John Ashcroft figure: Captain Teague, the guy who’s too old to go off and actually fight but who uses his position as the head of the community’s “Home Guard” to take advantage of his fellow-citizens, pursue his own agenda, and throw his weight around at home.
I suppose I shouldn’t tell you how he ends up….
George Grooms, his brother Henry and Henry’s brother-in-law Mitchell Caldwell were killed by Captain Teague after marching 7 miles to Mt. Sterling. George was forced to play Bonaparte Retreat (later called Groom’s Tune which can be found on the internet). Mitchell, according to Archives records, was an idiot and was told to put his hat over his face before he was shot. All three men were buried in a common grave. George was my great great great grandfather. My great great grandmother signed an affidavit stating that when she found her father’s body his fiddle was found at his feet. Some of Teague’s men were also deposed verifying how the murders occurred. (I have copies of these records.) Most of the men in Teague’s Homeguard were older men and neighbors of the men they shot. They even continued to live as neighbors after the war. Incidentally, another great great great grandfather, Henry Barnes was also found several miles away killed by Teagues Homeguard. His daughter, Amanda, married George Groom’s son.
I had no idea that this scene was going to be in the movie Cold Mountain. I wanted to stand up and cry through my tears that that was my family being killed.
I only wish that the author had given the true names and actual story but then it wouldn’t have been a love story, the real story had very tragic endings.