Thinking, feeling, and bad adaptation: another trip up Cold Mountain

Last night after my honors students watched the film Cold Mountain, a confused student asked a simple question: "What's the point of the preacher, then?" It's a particularly insightful question because it helps to unravel what's wrong with the film.

It's not a terrible film, particularly if you're hankering for a glance at Jude Law's naked butt, but it is a terrible adaptation of Charles Frazier's luminous novel. The film plays up the love story and leaves out some important events, including the crucial bear attack and the frequent hospitality-and-storytelling scenes that link the novel so nicely with Homer's Odyssey. But what happens to the preacher in the film is symptomatic of larger issues.

To review: in the novel, preacher Veasey is first a hapless villain and then the kind of fool whose foolishness rains pain down on others. Encounters with Veasey draw sharp outlines around Inman's value system, showing when and why he will or will not resort to violence, but more importantly, Veasey's foibles allow Frazier to introduce a question that haunts the novel: Can a person be too far ruined to be reclaimed? Fool though he may be, Veasey in the end steps forward to deliver a one-sentence sermon and inadvertently saves Inman's life, suggesting that redemption is possible even for dangerous fools.

In the film, on the other hand, Veasey is all fool, all the time. He provides some comic relief, but in the end he's just another carcass for Inman to lug around, joining all the other blasted bodies haunting Inman's consciousness. All of Inman's concerns about whether he's too broken to rejoin the human race are reduced to one line near the end, and the preacher plays no part in saving Inman's life. So, as my student asked, what's the point of the preacher? If he's not challenging Inman's value system, offering Inman evidence for the possibility of redemption, or saving Inman's life, he's just another dead man for whom viewers can feel sorry.

And this highlights the most significant difference between the book and the film: the novel asks readers to think, while the film wants viewers to feel. It's true that Frazier's novel is very moving and excels at making readers care about distant and disparate characters, but it also demands that we face deep philosophical questions about the human condition, the nature of evil, and the problem of pain. 

The film, on the other hand, is all about the feels. Even the evil Teague is given a tragic backstory to make viewers sympathize with his actions. In the novel, Teague and his cronies illustrate the way war can open up spaces for unscrupulous people to wreak havoc unhindered, challenging readers to think beyond the rightness or wrongness of the cause and consider war as an experience that wounds everyone it touches. In the film, Teague is just a vengeful old guy motivated by anger over the loss of his granddaddy's land. He's creepy and violent and mostly heartless, but his actions spring from a private pain rather than illustrating the larger wounds caused by war.

Let's face it: Charles Frazier wrote a war story entangled with a love story, but the film Cold Mountain presents a love story complicated by war. Frazier wants readers to think their way through the kinds of meaning-of-life issues that don't transfer well to the screen, while the film wants us to revel in emotional spectacle and the delights of the flesh. If you want to follow the complex progress of Ada and Inman's thoughts, read the book; but if what you really want is Jude Law's naked butt, this is the film for you.