December 29, 2003

Welcome to the interim. This week is the week of lists. But after not writing a regular column for five days, I need to do some of that first…

It’s almost impossible to give a realistic assessment of what Cold Mountain’s opening means in the scheme of the awards season. Everyone and their mother assumes that Miramax’s show pony is going to make the Best Picture list and grab eight or more nominations in addition. Yet, few of the traditional signs of awards season success have turned up.

MCN’s tally of Top Ten lists has the film in the fifteenth slot, well behind other contenders Lost In Translation (1), Mystic River (2), LOTR: Return of the King (3), Master & Commander (6) and In America (7). The tally will be updated with about 30 new lists today, but a major leap does not seem to be forthcoming. Indeed, on Sunday none of the three New York Times critics included the film on their Top Ten lists. In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Manohla Dargis went on a somewhat whacked out riff against the epics of the season, replacing the artistic failure of most of these films with a bit of conspiracy mongering so subtle that even the filmmakers don’t know they are part of it. But the upshot is that she spends more than two paragraphs tripping up Cold Mountain before trying to sell Mystic River’s smartly directed, written and produced whodunit as what Hollywood really needs. (I have a great deal of respect for Mystic River, but I expect that seven years from now, we will remember it as one of the most overrated films of this decade. If you want to see a really cool blank stare for 15 seconds or so, ask a Mystic River fanatic what emotional resonance the film had for them… not the characters… them. Fun for the whole family!)

It takes some serious balls to use Corliss’ Time Magazine comment, “It’s a grand movie epic,” when Richard Schickel tags the movie as “The Worst Of The Year.” (A bit hyperbolic to me, but it’s his bomb to drop.) Even Peter Travers, who is front and center on the Cold Mountain TV spots saying, “This is the one movie that has it all…” has the film at #5 on his Top Ten for the year. (“This is the fifth movie that has it all!”)

Even NBR wasn’t really at the party, throwing the film a Screenwriting bone and a spot on the Top Ten list. Oy! The only life preserver for this movie is the HFPA, which will not be making any more noise before nominations close. An Oscar watching pro said to me on Sunday, “It’s just too important. They’ll never let it not get nominated!” And that’s where we are. It’s “too important” to every studio, but when the studio is Miramax, that makes the film into a lock.

What the film has going for it is the Globes nominations and the pedigree, from Miramax to Minghella to Kidman to Zellweger and on and on. The $18.8 million four-day is not a blessing or a curse. The Last Samurai is seen as a financial failure after opening at $24.3 million (3 days) and looking like it will come up short of $100 million. Mystic River hasn’t done $54 million and is seen as a winner. Go figure. It is impossible to do any legitimate comparison to this oddball 4-day holiday weekend. There is no recent analogous circumstance. It would be unfair to penalize the film’s 3-day just because it opened before Friday. On the other hand, it would be unfair to say that $14.4 million 3-day is a great harbinger of success. The closest comparison I can come up with is Ali, which opened on Christmas Day, had a $14.7 million first 3-day weekend after racking up $20 million on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday and then died with just $23 million more ($58 million domestic total) when all was said and done. I don’t expect Cold Mountain to fall that hard.

Cold Mountain’s $14.4 million 3-day It is more than Gangs of New York opened to… but by this date last year, Gangs had $29.9 million in its coffers. Assuming that the film does a solid $22 million in the next week, taking full advantage of the New Year’s holiday, the film would still be $7 million behind Gangs’ run as of January 4 without any upcoming holidays. The film could be in the low 60s at the time Oscar nominations close… behind Last Samurai, Master & Commander and Something’s Gotta Give… all films having their box office situations used against them.

It’s a funny thing… this time of year, not promoting a film comes our as being against a film. I don’t hate Cold Mountain. I will anticipate Anthony Minghella’s next film with all the excitement that I bring to seeing any film by a director I admire. The comparison to Gangs of New York is a comparison to a film that got a lot of Oscar nominations. But one has to notice that all the things that “we” say as killing off other titles this awards season are visiting Cold Mountain… with the exception of the Globes… and yet, people are still willing to do stories about the “two film race.”

Whatever happens, one has to take their hat off to Miramax. There is only one other studio in the world that has the kind of “they can’t miss” reputation about anything that Miramax has about the Oscars. That’s Pixar and animation.

The other big box office news this weekend was not awards related… the smashing debut for Cheaper By The Dozen, Steve Martin’s second consecutive starring role to open over $25 million and to seem sure to pass $100 million.

READER OF THE DAY: I’m going to put a letter up supporting Cold Mountain as counterweight to the column today. And then, the real column will be on the next page… “Movies That You Didn’t See... But Should Have”

BACK FROM DEATH writes: “You were right in your comment that Cold Mountain is like a book of poetry. And if the sum of the parts is greater than the whole...what does that mean? I'd argue that the also-brilliant Return of the King (and the LOTR series as a whole) is the opposite, where you can find many flaws within but can't help loving the whole work. Is one of those types more worthy when it comes not only to awards, but our own feelings about the films? We had a similar disagreement last year with Gangs of New York, but I gather this year you don't feel Cold Mountain was as big of a mess (or disappointment). All I know is, there are many scenes, many characters, many lines, and many images from Cold Mountain I can't get out of my head three days later. I want to hear those poems more. Unlike the "respectable" Mystic River, which had a great screenplay, but I never want to see a frame of it again.

Let's begin with your primary argument with the film--that it tries to be too many things. If you're not partial to Apocalypse Now, then we can move on to something else. But aren't they very similar? Aren't both episodic journeys, in your own words, more "dangerous than epic"? Certainly AN is filled with what you claim CM has, "movie star turns" and "perfect lighting and images". Both continually refer back to an obvious theme, with Coppola it was "war is insane" and here it's "war is hell", but isn't that more refreshing to hear over and over again than "war makes heroes" (e.g. Saving Private Ryan)?

Let's get to the other stuff though: you claim only Ada has a character arc, and I can't believe you're missing the complementing arc of Ruby, who comes in just so damned PRACTICAL and with such a tough exterior, and over the course of the film opens up to the poetry of the world through her father, through Wuthering Heights, through Ada's piano playing, through Georgia, etc. The whole point of that relationship was that each woman gives the other what she's missing! And while Inman just becomes more of a ghost as the film goes on, isn't that the point too? Minghella himself has said he's the everyman. He's the witness. He is this film's Willard (a cold blooded-killer at the beginning and end of Apocalypse), who sees for us every Canterbury Tale, every Deadly Sin, every piece of the Odyssey until he loses his own soul by association, which he confesses to Ada at the end. The difference with Cold Mountain is that we get a bit of redemption, and the way it's done is pretty far from Hollywood Standard to me.

In the end, I think you're just being a little unfair about the film putting too much on its plate. I mean, if it didn't grab you, it didn't grab you, but thankfully I noticed you didn't jump on the bandwagon complaint about the romance itself or a lack of chemistry (strangely only The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter pointed out that in the 1800's people didn't necessarily jump into bed together, and that a few stolen moments could last a few years to a soldier and his sweetheart in Civil War days). Me, I just think of the walk under the constellations with Kathy Baker, Nicole and Renee, about Ray Winstone singing along with the last fiddle and banjo performance, about Eileen Atkins, about Natalie Portman's chest-caving shotgun blast, about the birds in the well, about the sparse piano notes at the reunion when others would have turned up the strings.

DAVID RESPONDS: Apocalypse Now? You have to be kidding! Both are journeys. But Coppola’s masterwork works in a more complex way on every single level. I only wish that the dangers of the journey in Could Mountain were 100th as resonant as those in Apocalypse. I only wish that Minghella had chosen to make a real comment on how that time in America history is still reflected in modern day. Instead, he focuses on the love story and dumps most of the Civil War context for roaming bands of thugs. The Thin Red Line was a brilliant, epic poem about man’s inhumanity to man. Apocalypse Now was a classical treatise on man’s ability to fool himself. Cold Mountain really doesn’t succeed in either pursuit. The truth is, Minghella’s skills are a lot more like Coppola’s than Malick’s. But the material here is more Malick than Coppola.

And now…
MOVIES THAT YOU DIDN’T SEE
... BUT SHOULD HAVE