I think it all comes down to my having accepted what the film is. COLD MOUNTAIN doesn't deliver the story I wanted to see? There's not enough of a rooting-interest factor? Tough, I told myself after the second viewing. This is a sweeping anti-war epic with a European tone -- deal with it. It's a love story that doesn't turn out very happily, but that's more or less the anti-war point.

(Another factor that got in the way of enjoying it initially was the sound at the Aidikoff screening room here in town, where I saw it last Wednesday. The Southern-accented dialogue is a little tough to decipher in the first place, but this was compounded by what I presumed was poorly calibrated Aidikoff sound. But the sound at the National Theatre on Sunday night was perfectly tuned, and I could hear and understand every syllable and vowel, and this obviously made a big difference.)

I've still got some beefs but after thinking this through over the last couple of days, I definitely respect and admire this Anthony Minghella film. A lot of people I've spoken to think it's a moving sumptuous thing. It deserves a look-see at the very least.

It may be, as noted elsewhere, that MOUNTAIN will play well with female audiences because it contains the season's only grand love story. You could argue, also, that because it's a Sydney Pollack-type love story (there are no happily-ever-after's in any love story that bears his creative stamp, even though his input as producer was subordinate to Minghella's) that the story is more affecting than if the lovers of the piece, Inman and Ada, had found peace in each other's arms.

The movie also has a Minghella element that has been thrown at all but one of his lead male characters in his last three filmed dramas -- THE TALENTED MR, RIPLEY, THE ENGLISH PATIENT and TRULY MADLY DEEPLY. I leave the reader to surmise what this might be.

Have I trimmed my views about this film because I met Minghella last weekend and discussed my reservations about it, and because he was gracious, undefensive and gentlemanly during our chat? I felt a little badly, yes, about trashing something the poor guy had worked four years on, but you can't be too much of a pushover.

Cold Breakdown

Based on Charles Frazier's best-selling novel, COLD MOUNTAIN is an Odyssey-type journey movie about a wounded Confederate soldier named Inman (Jude Law) who decides to desert in the waning days of the Civil War in September 1864, or eight months before the surrender at Appomattox Court House.

He decides to bolt because the love of his life, Ada (Nicole Kidman), has asked him in a letter to come back to her, and, I gathered, because he's never felt strongly about the Confederate cause, and because the war has pretty much been lost to the Union Army.

And so Inman starts making his way on foot from Virginia back to Cold Mountain, his home town in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. The problem with this scheme is that the Confederate Army has resolved to hunt down and execute all deserters, and that this order is being enforced on home turf by a brigade of sadistic home guard troops, led by the villainous Teague (Ray Winstone).

Meanwhile, Ada -- having moved to Cold Mountain from Charleston with her preacher father (Donald Sutherland) not long before the war began, and having barely gotten to know Inman save for having decided she loves and wants him for a husband -- has been trying to run her farm alone after her father's death, and doing a pathetic job of it. Help eventually comes from Ruby (Renee Zellweger), a colorful, can-do type who knows from herbs and fenceposts and yanking the heads off roosters.

75% or 80% of the film cuts back and forth between Inman's journey, and the travails of Ada, Ruby and another local woman, Sally (Kathy Baker), in Cold Mountain as the years go by and challenges are met. There are also flashbacks about Inman and Ada meeting and falling in love.

Inman's cross-country trek involves meet-ups with all kinds of different characters, including a lecherous preacher (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a hick farmer (Giovanni Ribisi), a lonely widow with a child (Nathalie Portman), and a hermit woman (Eileen Atkins).

There's also a fiddle-playing Confederate deserter named Stobrod (Brendan Gleeson), Ruby's once-abusive father who shows up at the farm along with a young guitar-playing chum named Georgia (Jack White of the White Stripes) to announce they're hiding out in a nearby mountain cave. The last 40 minutes cover Inman's arrival back home and reunion with Ada, and dealing with the violent attacks of the home guarders.

COLD MOUNTAIN's one big battle scene early on is exceptional, but when you boil it all down it's basically a Civil War atmosphere and period-dressings movie with a litany of star cameos -- one colorful, interesting IFP Spirit Awards cameo performance after another.

The lack of a rooting factor is what bothered me more than anything else. How is Inman going to elude the authorities and not get shot sooner or later? Desertion is a capital offense in the eyes of the Confederacy, and there doesn't seem to be any way to find safety or security. He's like Paul Muni in I AM A FUGITIVE CHAIN GANG all through it, and obviously courting a dark fate.

You feel for the guy, filthy and miserable, wounded and nearly killed in a fight with the Yankees. But it's hard to sympathize with this decision, as he's putting himself in harm's way of a different but just-as-dangerous kind.

The odds may be against them, but there's a rooting interest for Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack and Kate Winslet's Rose in TITANIC. They're young and energetic and may survive, so naturally you're pulling for them. And there's a rooting interest for THE FUGITIVE's Richard Kimble, who's running from the law to try and prove his innocence about a crime he didn't commit.

But I don't relate to a man who is, yes, okay, understandably in shock and feeling brutalized and horrified by war and having nearly been blown to pieces, but has decided to fundamentally shoot himself and his future in the foot by deserting. There's no future when a character on a big screen runs away from a tough situation. It's all a downhill arc.

It's like a story about a guy who refuses to pay taxes -- you know the feds are going to get him sooner or later, and all you can say is, "Schmuck...you should face the world and deal with it and figure something out, but for God's sake don't run."

But once you give up on looking for a rooting interest and say to yourself, "Okay, the war is going to chew everyone and everything up, and most of the people you're getting to know are going to suffer or die, and there's no telling who'll make it and who won't but definitely don't get your hopes up about Inman"...once you say that to yourself and accept that this is a film about war's brutality, it's fine.

Then it becomes this sad, beautiful lamentation, and you're in the hands of a filmmaker taking you on a rugged, episodic journey, and you can just enjoy the ride for what it is...then everything kicks in and COLD MOUNTAIN starts to smell and taste like a feast.

Just don't go looking for anything that equals, much less surpasses, Vivien Leigh's "I'll never be hungry again" radish scene in GONE WITH THE WIND.

That 1939 Civil War soap opera, cornball as it was, was packed with emotional gotcha moments. COLD MOUNTAIN has three by my count -- a third-act scene between Kidman and Law that I won't describe, a bedtime scene with Law and Natalie Portman alone, and one right after this in which they cope with an assult by three Union soldiers (one of them played by 28 DAYS LATER lead Cillian Murphy).

GONE WITH THE WIND said that when times are tough, sometimes the selfish devious types do a better job at surviving than the kindly and pure of heart. COLD MOUNTAIN says that war tears up the fabric and brings out good things in decent people, but also beastly things in people who weren't so nice to begin with.

It's not fair to compare COLD MOUNTAIN TO Ken Burns' THE CIVIL WAR, the multi-part documentary that ran on PBS about 15 years ago, but that show conveyed the whole pain and horror of the war with more specificity and scope.

Law is too much of a character actor to play Inman like, say, Robert Redford might have 20 or 25 years ago. But it's a performance fed by honesty and particularity all through. I felt concerned at times that he seemed a little too non-verbal for comfort, and I became scared when he lost his voice due to a war wound, but it gradually returned...whew.

Nicole's performance is fine, but she looks a bit too stylish and prettified at times for a woman struggling to work a farm. You can see in her closeups that she's wearing eyeliner and a touch of mascara. Some of the outfits she wears in the cold-weather scenes look like they were bought at Barney's. (David Poland is calling the film J. CREW MOUNTAIN.) Perhaps a Barney's clothes line inspired by the women of the Civil War who suffered and worked their fingers to the bone while they waited for their men to come home will show up on the shelves.

No offense to Nicole, but I wish Portman been cast as Ada. Her scenes are so fiercely emotional and impassioned. The scene when she asks Law to come to her bed and then holds his hand and cries, and he holds her...this is the most touching moment in the film. And I really liked Gleeson as the fiddle player. This makes two memorable loving dad's he's played this year -- this and the father in 28 DAYS LATER.

Zellweger plays Ruby too broadly, like a road company version of Annie Oakley or Ado Annie from OKLAHOMA. You eventually get used to her corn cob accent and contorted expressions (she reminded me at times of Dylan Baker in PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES), but her acting never stops feeling like a "bit."

I have one technical quibble: when Law starts on his journey, there is a shot of him walking in what is meant to seem like a southerly direction, as he is heading out of Virginia towards North Carolina. And yet he is seen walking to the left in a shot that faces the Atlantic Ocean, which of course means he's heading north.

John Seale's cinematography, Dante Ferreti's production design and Walter Murch's editing are outstanding, and will almost certainly be nominated for Oscars in their respective categories.

The film itself is a lock for a Best Picture nomination. I presume it goes without saying I would rather see COLD MOUNTAIN take the prize over LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KNG, which has acquired a reputation around town as The Film With Five Endings.

All's Well That Ends Well

Last Friday's decision by a Manhattan judge to temporarily nullify the MPAA's screener ban has unleashed a torrent of screener mailings from major distribs and the "dependents" (Miramax, Sony Classics, Focus Features). In response, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) has decided to rescind the cancellation of their annual awards hand-out, and they may be voting on the year's best this coming Saturday (12.13).

Unless critic Andy Klein's suggestion to wait until various screeners have been received by mail is adopted, that is. Klein reasonably feels that since the point of cancelling the LAFCA awards was a response to certain critics within the organization not being able to see all eligible films due to the screener ban, it would be consistent to wait until more screeners have been sent and seen before voting.

Even distribs that have hurriedly sent films to critics since Friday haven't covered all their bases. Focus Features has sent out 21 GRAMS, LOST IN TRANSLATION and SYLVIA but not Francois Ozon's SWIMMING POOL. But who hasn't seen SWIMMING POOL? And apart from those inclined to give Ludivine Sagnier some kind of Breakout Actress of the Year award (which would be justified), who has been speaking about Sagnier or costar Charlotte Rampling being acting award contenders? Nobody.

VARIETY critic Robert Koehler, meanwhile, has been bravely pushing for the group to stop giving out a Best Picture award altogether and just issue a list of ten highly recommended must-see's, or something along those lines.

Wells verdict on Klein's idea: forget it. People want to vote and get this crap over with, and there are no significant entries I can think of that haven't been easily viewable in screening rooms. And besides, LAFCA has always announced their choices before the New York Film Critics Circle, which meets on Monday, December 15th, and they probably won't want to risk their awards being viewed as an after-thought.

Wells verdict on Koehler's suggestion: there's no oomph or headline factor in declaring a ten-best list and letting it go at that. Deciding upon winners in the usual categories will contrast with or balance out choices from other critics orgs, but a ten-best pronouncement will just spray all over the place and be absorbed into the ether.

It's also looking like Chicago Film Critics Association board will end their suspension of their awards. The organization's board is apparently intending to meet soon and get the ball rolling for a restoration of business as usual, pending a vote from the membership.

Shorter Shift

SWING SHIFT, the 1984 Goldie Hawn movie about a Rosie the Riveter type having an extra-marital affair during World War II, is coming out on DVD from Warner Home Video on 1.20.04.

Samuel King, a U.S. Air Force journalist, wrote on Monday to ask if this version is the longer one I wrote about a year or so ago, or is it the shorter, studio-released version?

It's the latter. I remember thinking it was okay when I first saw it 19 and 1/2 years ago, but no great shakes. It was regarded by critics at the time as the anti-Demme, forces-of-artistic-repression cut that had been re-tooled and shortened, mainly so it would do better commercially and also to flatter Hawn with extra close-ups and more screen time.

The Demme version, a looser, jazzier, ensemble-like Altman piece (with a lot more footage given over to costar Christine Lahti, who was terrific and would have gotten a big career boost had this version been released), was given to me last year on VHS. It's an artier and more ambitious film, but I didn't find it wonderful. It felt a little flat and boring at times.

The story is more or less the same used by Hal Ashby's COMING HOME, which had come out six years earlier -- a military husband goes off to war, stay-at-home wife takes a job (in a WW II armaments plant in SHIFT, in a VA hospital in COMING HOME), meets a man, has an affair, husband comes home, discovers what happened and the merd hits the fan...and yet the wife has changed, matured, evolved, etc.

I think COMING HOME tells this story far mor effectively than either version of SWING SHIFT.

Trapped

I read a prediction in the late '90s that by 2010, the average speed of a car driving around Los Angeles during rush hour would be 11.2 miles per hour. It's almost like that now. Getting around is an unquestionably slower experience now than it was ten years ago. Melrose Ave. from San Vicente to La Cienega is jammed every night around 5:30, and it didn't used to be.

By the time of President Dean's second inaugural address, the situation is going to be intolerable.

I say it's time for residents to get creative. It's time for everyone to get into a Rome or Paris frame of mind and start buying scooters. (This town was made for scooters with the warm weather and all.) It's time for everyone to start buzzing through the air like everyone does in BLADE RUNNER. I ride my bike whenever I can, and it's great. Cars are jail cells. Free your minds, free your souls....think boldly and differently.

Animal Dislike

"Your comments about Renee Zellweger's acting in COLD MOUNTAIN seemed to hit the camel on its head. I haven't seen this film yet, and judging from the trailerand your words about her performance, I won't be seeing it at all and I love this director's previous films.

"How is it that Zellweger keeps getting work? She is one of the worst things I have ever seen on a screen. When I saw the COLD MOUNTAIN trailer a couple of weeks a go, I felt nothing but bile in my throat. I love the look of the film, but putting Zellweger in the film simply means that Miramax ain't gettin' my eight bucks. After seeing her in CHICAGO, a horrible film all the way around, I resolved I would never watch anything with her in it again.

"Zellweger has joined a short and exclusive list of actors whom I will not see in any film, regardless of the caliber of the rest of the production. These include Halle Berry, Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie, Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz (the queen of the bad actresses guild). Yes, I saw GANGS OF NEW YORK, but that was the first film of her's since 1997 I had been to.). Yeah, I know they're all women. There are a few guys I am sick of as well, but they escape my mind right now." -- Jason Taylor

Wells to Taylor: You should keep in mind how sublime Zellweger was in JERRY MAGUIRE, and that she might, with luck, achieve something like that again some day. Diaz drives me up the wall when she does her spirited airhead number, but she was better than okay, I thought, in GANGS OF NEW YORK, ANY GIVEN SUNDAY and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH.

Christ Stopped in Austin

"I was at last Sunday's Austin screening of THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, and I can tell you I was not orchestrated on how to write about this film. I was compelled to write about it. I was up for more than 30 hours before I wrote my review, but I couldn't sleep until I had it out there. I think it's an amazing film. The feeling in the crowd was that it was an exceptional piece of art, and none of us could stop talking about it.

"There was one negative review posted on the site, by the way. But most of us were in awe.

"And there is no alleged anti-Semitism. There just isn't any at all. The film is filled with Jews -- some noble, some afraid, some self-serving, and some who love Christ because he's family. It's a lot like life that way, I'd imagine. I'm not trying to sound smarmy here, but I really want this to get out there that the film isn't anti-Semitic. My wife's Jewish and she loved the film completely.

"Were we affected by the fact that we knew Mel would be in attendance? Sure, you could think that. You'd be wrong though. We just came off a night were we saw some incredible films and some pretty damn bad ones (including a crappy 60s teen pregnancy movie), so we were open for anything. But the film stunned the audience. You should have heard it. The Drafthouse was so silent you could hear a pin drop, when the movie ended. Then the applause started, and didn't end for five minutes.

"Frankly, I can't wait for you to see this movie. I really want to know what you think about it. " -- Alan Cerny