Cold Mountain - The Deaths of Pangle and Stobrod...

Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain, a motion picture set in the time of the American Civil War, focuses on how harsh life was in such an environment as a mountain range.  The American Civil War was fought between the years 1861 – 1865 was fixated on abolishing slavery and left 600,000 soldiers dead after gruesome combat. Directed by Anthony Minghella and featuring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman, it reached $173,013,509 in box office profiting near on $95 million. The narrative of the movie concentrates on the love of two of the protagonists, and shows their constant separation throughout the film. It is a typical Romeo/Juliet style film with the two lovers united towards the end.

This section of the film is heavily dependent on light to emphasise and create the mood wanted by the director. He specifically uses the contrast in light for this. The soft, dim glow reflected in the characters faces by the campfire is representative of warmth and safety, whereas the cold, blue-tinted light which is present in the ‘drop-off’ behind them shows the genuine situation which they are in. When one of the characters turns away from the light, his face suddenly darkens, suggesting his sinister, threatening personality. This technique gives us, the viewer, a warning as to what is going to happen and because of this, makes us feel anxious and tense.

As said before, the light in this extract reflects the mood existent at the time of the narrative. We humans have a preconception about light. We perceive day to be safe, harmless and welcoming which is juxtaposed by night being dark, mysterious and ominous and because of this naïve reality, the director uses it to his advantage. He plays on our mind by using our prejudice so as not to waste valuable screen time explaining the mood via dialogue. This mere fact is staged so clearly in the clip. The death of the two musicians coincidentally occurs at night, while the man who is running towards safety is shown in broad daylight. The director could have included both anecdotes at night, which may have had just one effect on us as a group, fear, for both the musicians and lone man. Instead he used high key lighting for the scene of the witness seeking refuge to emphasise the safe, secure mood which daylight brings. We, as a group, did  fall into this well-designed yet so simple trap created by Anthony Minghella. 

During the start of this sequence the camera pans rightward to reveal the location of where the man is heading and what is in his surroundings, thus an establishing shot is created. Its’ composition is so well designed that both horizontal and vertical thirds are very noticeable consequently producing an image which is equally informative but also attractive. After the cut, the camera tilts from the ground to the person overlooking the landscape which again is informative and appealing. To us, we were more focused on the scenery and more taken by the picture than actually processing the information that we were given.

The footprints were captured to emphasise the distance of the journey that the man endured and by tilting the camera upwards rather than down towards the floor, it also portrays his progression. Just before the final edit, it shows the situation of the two women and then suddenly cuts straight to the same man featured at the start of the clip, on yet another trek. Parallel editing of this sort is used to show the distance between the two protagonists and is extremely effective when used in an almost invisible cut.