Whew…just got back from seeing “Cold Mountain,” and I’m exhausted. Almost feel like I’ve lived through the Civil War, though I don’t think the actual Civil War lasted as long as the movie. Or maybe it felt that long to me because the only major battle scene was right at the start, and the remaining two and a quarter hours mostly featured Jude Law walking, extremely slowly, back to Cold Mountain and Nicole Kidman, while Kidman learned from Renee Zellweger learned how to live just fine, thank you, without a man around.
Proving that Laurel’s liking of any film is directly related to the following formula, movie minutes of men killing each other in a bloody fashion divided by movie minutes of two or more women sharing their feelings, she liked “Cold Mountain” a lot—probably more than I did. Though the part when lots of Union soldiers are karmically trapped in the crater they just made with a bunch of explosives aimed at the Confederates, and the rebels drag their cannons around and point them straight down into the crater and start blasting away at the closely packed Union army, now that was some damn fine movie-making that captured my attention wonderfully.
But after that I knew that it was going to be an excruciating wait until Law healed enough from his wounds, and spent lots more time gazing at the torn faded photo of Kidman, before he would begin his tortuous journey back to Cold Mountain. Where, soon after he arrives, everyone in the theatre, including me, knew that he would: ____ (Fill in the blank, three letters, rhymes with “eye,” but don’t try to figure this puzzle out if you haven’t seen the movie, and don’t want to know that, at the end, Jude Law ____’s.)
[P.S. on January 31: a HinesSight reader considers that he has already figured out the puzzle and thereby won the (unannounced) contest, which, if he is confirmed as the winner, carries with it an (undetermined) prize. Anyway, it won’t spoil the movie for anyone to know that Jude Law might cry at the end, especially since there are so many other words that rhyme with “eye” (lie, fry, sigh, …).
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