Why am I unreasonably annoyed? I am unreasonably annoyed because the leads in Cold Mountain, a film about the Civil War, are Australian and British.
I’m not saying I am reasonably annoyed.
I’m saying I am unreasonably annoyed.
It would be like … having an entirely American cast in a film about the storming of the Bastille … I mean, isn’t that a bit bizarre?
The other thing that annoyed me was the recent huge headline in The New York Times promoting the film:
Lovers Striving for a Reunion, with a War in the Way
Oh – the Civil War was just one of those annoying things “in the way”, was it? Like an ottoman you trip over, or a crack in the sidewalk…
The really important thing is that the lovers achieve their reunion.
It’s the same issue I have with movies that use the Holocaust as some kind of plot-point. The Holocaust is there to provide context, or – it’s just another event among many. Swing Kids is the most egregious example. Sure, 6 million Jews were being murdered, but what REALLY matters is that a group of German kids managed to have a good time and – against all odds – kept up their swing-dance clubs! Good for them!!
Damn that Civil War. It’s always in the way.
True and true, but let me add two caveats.
The first is that we experience the world personally – our own local concerns mesh with our thoughts about larger events, and most of what we do is local.
The second is the old narrative point made by Herman Wouk and Leo Tolstoy. They were engaged in a different project than Cold Harbor, trying to tell the story of the conflict through a couple of characters rather than telling the story of a couple of characters in the midst of a conflict, but there is some overlap. As Wouk discovered when looking to War and Peace while plotting Winds of War, the core narrative in Tolstoy is the love story. The rest of the events serve as backdrop. And so he copied that pattern for his own attempt at an epic novel.
One of the things that distinguishes history and literature is that one focuses on the broad – even when we write biography it is with an eye on explaining the era – and the other on the personal. Literature is more closely tied to film, which is where the Times got its cliche headline.
A tragic tale of two lovers set against a world gone mad !!!
How can their love survive the flames?
With a 1000 of elephants!
and so on.
ps, have you ever read Terry Pratchett’s _Moving Pictures_ which I just badly paraphrased?
Ted K.
Dear Sheila:
I’ve a masters’ in history, which is going to color some of what I say. Pardon if I sound a bit elitist.
The problem with most folks is that they get ALL of their history from the movies (I’m continuously amazed, for example, at how many people have accepted large portions of the movie “Braveheart” as truth!!)
I saw “Swing Kids” when it was first released, and it was embarrassing, although not for the reasons you stated. The whole film was ‘reaching’ for a point and a plot — it appeared as if someone wanted to make a film about Nazi Germany and also about swing-music, and didn’t have the budget for both – so he combined the two plots and reached for common ground!
Cold Mountain doesn’t bother me. I thought it was a good film and a better book.
Granted, I’d've wished they’d found some Good Ol’ Amurrican Actors and Actresses for the job – but the beauty of any writing is when an author can take something universal and make it personal — which is what Frazier did with the novel, and what the producers did with the movie.
Best,
-Will
I agree with you, in many ways.
Nicole Kidman is much too pretty to be Ada. Jude Law is much, much, much, much too pretty to be Inman.
Also they used Romania to fill in for the real Cold Mountain because the Brits and Australians and Hollywood types felt that the real Cold Mountain was too “mountainous” for their movie and they couldn’t cope with the terrain.
I am from that area and have climbed Cold Mountain many times – I looked forward to the movie only to see the familiar terrain on the big screen. I am, I believe, very reasonably disgusted.
Will, I’m an elitist about such matters as well. I do not look to films to be history books. That would be one boring mess of a film.
But one of the huge ongoing discussions on this blog is: I can enjoy Braveheart, know that I am seeing an entertaining film – and because of that film, decide to go and read books about what really happened.
I have done such things countless times.
I can separate. I do not see films as merely entertaining – but I do not look to them as accurate.
My main concern is one of story: do they tell a compelling story? Do they create characters who are interesting?
I don’t give a hoot whether or not it’s historically accurate, if those criteria are met.
I’ll go read books, if I want to search out facts.
Oh, and one small quibble:
You write: “I saw “Swing Kids” when it was first released, and it was embarrassing, although not for the reasons you stated.”
Uh – well – not sure what to say to that … except that I just stated my opinion. Opinions are not truth. My opinion is that the movie sucked because they used the Holocaust cynically, and as a plot point.
Oh and by the way:
I haven’t seen Cold Mountain yet. Just wanted to snark a bit in my usual unreasonable way.
I hate Renee Zellwegger. In an almost physical way.
I know I’m in the minority on this. But I have to be dragged to movies in which she appears.
CW:
Love it. Cold Mountain was too mountainous.
Were you as offended about the American Renee playing the British Bridget Jones?
I never saw that movie because of my issues with Renee. She is like nails on a blackboard to me.
First of all, I read Bridget Jones – and the whole joke is that she is NOT fat but she THINKS she is. she keeps a tally in her journal: “Today I weight 122 pounds. Must starve myself.” “Today I weight 118 pounds. It is a good good day.”
The joke is: 122 pounds is skinny, by anyone’s standards.
Renee plumping herself up is a shameless publicity ploy and has nothing to do with the joke in the book.
but that’s neither here nor there.
It’s not so much about Brits playing Americans or the opposite – it is just that the Civil War is such an American story.
oh, and I realize I’m probably being totally unreasonable. But for some reason – it annoys me.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who is bugged by Zellweger. It’s due mostly to the pathetic character she played in Jerry McGuire, but I honestly don’t understand her popularity.
One of the things that particularly bothered me about Bridget Jones (the film, not the book – haven’t read the latter) is that for all the weight Zellweger gained, she wasn’t anywhere close to what I would consider “fat”, more a few pounds overweight, but healthy looking enough. Of course, by Hollywood’s standards, 125 lbs makes a woman hefty.
What about Titanic? If that boat didn’t sink, Leo would have had his way with Kate, then in the morning, been like, “Yeah, anyway, um. I’ll call you. Nice meeting you.” And with a peck on the cheek, he would have been gone. But dying in the freezing ocean is more romantic.
I’m not so upset with the casting of the leads, so long as they can sound appropriate. I don’t want to hear them doing a Texas drawl when playing North Carolinians. It is rather uncommon to have foreign leads for a movie set in America, but I think Law and Kidman are capable enough.
Add me to the “can’t stand Zellweger” crowd, she’s just plain irritating.
I still want to see “Cold Mountain”, though.
“Sure, 6 million Jews were being murdered, but what REALLY matters is that a group of German kids managed to have a good time and – against all odds – kept up their swing-dance clubs!”
This kind of trivialization also occurs in another context: high-school lesson plans (which I have been researching on the Internet for everyone’s future elucidation, horrification, and amusement.) It’s fairly common that study of the Holocaust and/or WWII is combined with study of something else–math, for instance, as in “graph the number of people killed year-by-year in each major concentration camp, using your choice of bar or line graphs”)
Heroism as well as horror is trivialized: my favorite is a module on those wonderful anti-Nazi German kids, Hans and Sophie Scholl, which has as one of its objectives “learn watercoloring techniques.”
Off-topic, but came to mind…
For me it’s the accents that will keep me away. They’re uniformly awful.