Cold Mountain
	Okay I will admit that I am biased towards Anthony Minghella as a director.  I loved The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley is probably one of my favourite gay films, let alone one of my favourite movies period.  That said, when I went to see Cold Mountain tonight, I was riding with pretty high expectations and for the most part, I was not disappointed, not because it wasn't flawed, but because it went for something more.
		Cold Mountain tells the story of two people, Ada and Inman.  Ada is the daughter of a minister who has come to Cold Mountain to start a church while Inman is a simple labourer called in to help construct the building.  From the very first sight of each other, the two fall in love, but it isn't that simple.  Suddenly, the Civil War starts and Inman is called away, creating a great distance between the two lovers before . . . well, before they've made love.  This leads to one of the most common misconceptions of this film: they're not really in love.  The rest of the film concerns the journey to find each other through the hardships of war and ultimately life.
			Much has also been said about Nicole Kidman, Jude Law and Renee Zellweger in this film and their acting separate and together is amazing.  What can't be emphasized enough is that there are many actors doing great work like Kathy Baker, Philip Seymore Hoffman and Natalie Portman that add flavour as characters who help shape the lives of the two lovers.  This becomes the focal point of this movie in its perspective that is that the two lovers are so awkwardly quiet at the beginning that they barely know themselves.  Before their journey, Ada plays piano and Inman hammers and labours and that is really all that consumes their lives.  By the end, however, after war, suffering, loss and death, they become greater than they ever were to begin with.  This film is not about the Civil War or slavery (yes there are slaves in this film, but they are not the focus), it is about how crisis evolves us and changes us.  It is about how single moments change us and make us start to see who we really are.  Inman speaks of the small moments that they shared at the end of the film that made him want to come back to her and Ada talks about the things she could do, but all the more things she didn't know how to do in everyday life.  With times passing, they do grow to love each other, but more importantly they grow to love themselves.
				This film is filled with a splendor of images (the war scenes are almost operatic) and a film score and songs that take you back to the days when a nation fought with itself so easily.  It can't be disregarded that this is a beautiful film that does have some flaws to its method.  When I was sitting through the credits, quite a number of people left the film okay with what they saw, but remembering nothing special.  The few of us who stayed waiting till the very end knew that we had experienced something, though I would have loved to sit through an after discussion on the film.  Cold Mountain was not the simple film that we thought we would sit through and for some, that was the better way to leave it.  Some films leave people with more than what they give.