Cold Mountain

[oyceter]

Very big spoilers here.

Wow that was a depressing movie. I'm not sure if I liked it. I think I admire it artistically and I get the whole war sucks thing very much out of it, but wow that was a depressing movie.

It wasn't even that Inman dies. I think it was that they're building up this giant, larger than life romance, where these two hurt people are thinking of each other for four years or so, and he struggles and finally makes it home to her. And then, bam! Instead of working out things like do they still love each other, did they ever love each other, how does one recover from a war, do they even know each other at all, they get a night of sex, and oops, Inman's dead. Sorry Ada.

Also, pretty much everyone else dies too.

Miserably.

Felt a lot like a George R. R. Martin book actually -- after a few shots, I was constantly on the edge of the seat and wondering when the next bad thing was going to happen. It was just the flood of badness and almost no goodness at all that depresses me.

Plus, I think the writer copped out in killing Inman instead of having to go the long hard way and answer serious questions about a relationship between two people who only had a few moments and then four life-changing years apart. That was the movie I wanted to see. Oh well.

Comments

[rahael.livejournal.com]

Oh! Poor you! That sounds like an experience. I haven't read the book - does it follow it faithfully?

Also, what's up with the one night of sex followed by death? Until I watched BtVS I hadn't even thought it was an actual trope (sex=disaster). There was Romeo and Juliet. Maybe I've forgotten the ohters I'd read. Maybe I didn't get the message!

Thanks, Oyce

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

...I think I'll give one a pass.

[oyceter]

I haven't read it either, but I figure Minghella wouldn't do something as drastic as totally change the ending around. I don't think I'm going to read it if it's half as depressing!

I have a feeling that it's not so much sex=disaster so much as it's so much more tragic when someone dies right afterward or something... Hrm. Although with Emma Bovary, there was sex=disaster.

Re: Thanks, Oyce

[oyceter]

No prob. It was really quite depressing -- I read myself to sleep with a romance novel to make myself happier.

It got some mixed reviews as well.

Re: Thanks, Oyce

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Guess what I've been watching? Neon Genesis Evangelion: End of Evangelion (#25 Air & and a bit into #26 MPHfY) then watched Emma for two hrs, and now watching Princess Blade. ;grin:

Re: Thanks, Oyce

[oyceter]

Oooo Emma! The Gwyneth Paltrow one? Is it any good? I think I started it once and never finished, sadly.

[thewildmole.livejournal.com]

My "favorite" sex=death moment was in City of Angels. It's not a great movie anyway, but you sit through about two hours of Nicolas Cage doing his basset hound imitation complete with those eyes of his and speaking in the slow, soft, "I'm sensitive, dammit!" voice, and Meg Ryan playing a driven, competitive heart surgeon. Yeah...Meg Ryan. *That* was a bit of believable casting.

Anyway, he gives up his status as an angel to be with her. They have one night together at her place in Tahoe. She bikes to a little mountain store to get something she thinks will be just perfect for breakfast and, on the way back, completely reveals herself as a RedShirt (tm Star Trek) by taking her hands off the bike's handlebars and spreading them wide as she tilts her face up to the sun to revel in the sheer gloriousness that is life.

Cut to: shot of logging truck going across the road.

I was bad. I laughed and had to turn it into a coughing spell because I thought the woman behind me was going to kill me :).

[oyceter]

Oh god, I remember that! Yick. That one at least the two had some semblence of a relationship (although much of it kind of like, "look, this is how a pear tastes"). Then of course, there's Titanic, during which I giggled the entire way through Jack's little icy frozen body sinking to the bottom of the ocean. I think it was the pose. Least in Casablanca and GWTW, no one dies.

[thewildmole.livejournal.com]

...I giggled the entire way through Jack's little icy frozen body sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Hee! I think I love you :). I did, too.

Rose: "I'll never let go, Jack! Never!"

*cue her prying her hand from Jack's so Popsicle Boy can sink to the bottom of the ocean*

[oyceter]

I couldn't help it! He was just frozen in such a ridiculous pose and his hands were still like little paws when he fell off from grasping the raft! Waaay too much for me. Plus, I thought the love story was pretty laughable in the first place. Nothing kills a good love tragedy like that ^_^.

Tee hee heee.