The Cold Mountain Film Analysis

The Cold Mountain drama film is an epic historical analysis of the life of a deserter of a Confederate army seeking to get back to his lover. The film introduces us to the plight of the soldiers, the form of combats and the state of the nation during and after the civil war. After hurrying to register for the Confederate States army, the young men among them a carpenter who is in love with the preacher’s daughter, Ada, they only entered into a battle with ill-fated attacks. After Inman gets injured in a friendly fire when on a mission to flush out the surviving Union troops, he receives a letter from Ada requesting him to stop fighting and return to her. He later deserts the inevitable Confederate defeat for the Cold Mountain (Hamilton, 2003).
The film reveals the arrogance of the Union foragers who attacks Inman leaving him for dead, kills Veasey and harasses Sara, a widow who had been raising her child Ethan singlehandedly. They steal her livestock and attempts to rape her. The bondage left upon families and individuals by the war is evident with the exposure of Ada’s sufferings after her father died. She ended up surviving on the mercy of the neighbors. This is an indication that the war drained the people of their economic power, destabilized families and left many children orphans. It was the result of the significant drift between the south and north experienced today.
While bringing together the theme of war, arrogance, and brutality, love, and poverty, the author realizes a perfect film from a mere story (Frazier, 1998).

The scenes, music and plot buildup is coupled with ancient-like aesthetic, a feature that makes it a perfect recap of the civil war period. The level of sound is precisely coordinated with the color and other camera work such as shooting angles. While the film mainly tackles the issue of civil war, a situation that happened when there was too much slavery, segregation, and torture of the people of color, it has remained neutral and tackled the anguish during the war period in general. The author has kept off the issue of home guards attacking the blacks or whites as was the occasion. Rather, he gives an insight into the citizens’ relations with the war, the land, the beauty of love and dangers of solitude. His work is a revelation of the changing society and a lesson on the effects of war in the history of the American civil movements (“Reconstruction – American Civil War,” 2016).
The film has an exact historical coverage. It retracts back to the fourth year of the civil war in 1864. The scene represents the fierce and fearsome sections of the conflict in Virginia during the war. It is evident that the Union engineers had dug the tunnel at Petersburg. Historical archives indicate that the Union troops were slaughtered in the big hole after the explosion in the tunnels (Thompson, 2004). However, there are some sentiments especially in the Eastern Tennessee and North Carolina that were not covered in the film that could have made it more realistic. This could help explain more of the conflict between the south and north and between the African-Americans and the whites that ensued after the war. The film was based on a true story of W.P. Inman, a military serving in the Company F. the Cold Mountain is a historical crater where he was wounded in 1864 (Peuser & Plante, 2016). This is proof that the film has some historical accuracy although it has not covered all the sufferings Inman went experienced.

References
Frazier, C. (1998). Cold Mountain (1st ed.). New York: Vintage Books.
Hamilton, F. (2003). Friendly Fire. Academy Of Management Review, 28(1), 158-160. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amr.2003.8925264
Peuser, R. & Plante, T. (2016). Summer 2004: Cold Mountain’s Inman: Fact Versus Fiction. National Archives. Retrieved 15 December 2016, from https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/summer/inman.html
Reconstruction – American Civil War – HISTORY.com. (2016). HISTORY.com. Retrieved 15 December 2016, from http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction
Thompson, B. (2004). Cold facts about `Cold Mountain.’ Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 15 December 2016, from http://Cold facts about `Cold Mountain.’