Analysis: Romania for Carolina

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- No matter what the song says, for writer-director Anthony Minghella something could be finer than to be in Carolina when it came to filming "Cold Mountain."

The new movie adaptation of Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War romance novel stars Jude Law as a Confederate soldier whose love for a woman, played by Nicole Kidman, compels him to desert in the closing days of the Civil War so he can reunite with her in the town of Cold Mountain, N.C. The story bears some resemblance to Homer's "Odyssey" due to a series of encounters the man has with colorful and dangerous characters.

The picture was shot largely in Romania, rather than the region of the United States where the story was set. Shooting overseas, of course, resulted in considerable savings to producers -- but Minghella said that, from a visual standpoint, it was the right move.

Speaking recently at the American Film Institute's Harold Lloyd Masters Seminar in Los Angeles, the Oscar-winning director of "The English Patient" told an audience of film students that he scouted North Carolina locations for four months before concluding that it would not be a suitable place to shoot the film.

"You just see this hand of the 20th century and the 21st century rewriting the landscape," said Minghella. "It has been crisscrossed and tattooed and scarred with industry. What you can create in Transylvania and Romania is more ... like time travel than anything you can do in America."

Of course, there was also the matter of production cost.

"It was exorbitant," said Minghella. "The film commissions have so little incentives to offer."

As it turned out, The New York Times reported, the European Union offered a $10-million credit, which allowed Miramax Films to bring the movie in for about $80 million -- still the most expensive movie the studio has ever made.

"Cold Mountain" opened on Christmas Day -- pitting it against a line-up of new releases that includes "Cheaper by the Dozen," "Paycheck" and "Peter Pan," as well as expanded releases of "Big Fish" and "In America." It is carrying quite a load for Miramax -- what with high expectations for both commercial and awards season success.

A number of critics have already observed that "Cold Mountain" is part of a cluster of 19th century war movies to play in U.S. theaters this season -- along with "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and "The Last Samurai." Not surprisingly, all three offer spectacular production and costume designs -- "Master and Commander" even benefited from favorable press coverage for the authenticity of the buttons on its costumes.

Minghella cautioned his student audience against getting too hung up on verisimilitude.

"Period films get obsessed with advertising their authenticity," he said. "The harder job is the truth."

Minghella said it was important him to do "right" by America in his depiction of the Civil War South. Ultimately, he said, war movies aren't about "getting the flags right," but about examining why people are killing one another

"This movie is about the futility of solving conflicts with steel," said Minghella. "This film is about nature vs. human insanity. War is like a stain that stains everybody, especially these new wars we find ourselves in."

Minghella singled out the Iraq war for criticism, citing a line of dialogue from "Cold Mountain" in which a critic of the Civil War complains that young men were sent off to fight "with a flag and a lie."

Foreign policy aside, a discussion of "Cold Mountain" also brings Oscar politics into play.

Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein -- known as a tough inside fighter during Hollywood's annual awards season -- seemed less than ferocious in an interview with the Times.

"If we lose, we lose," he said. "And all we have is the satisfaction of backing a movie that people said was a difficult movie to make."

The picture was left of the American Film Institute's list of the 10 best movies of 2003, but the National Board of Review named it one of the year's 10 best -- and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association gave it eight nominations, including one for best drama movie.

Weinstein said that, in the end, he would not measure the success of "Cold Mountain" by one of Hollywood's most widely used yardsticks -- gross receipts.

"The problem with American business today is we don't allow ourselves to take the kind of risks we should in the arts," he said. "If you're saying you spent $80 million to do a comic-book movie, you could say I was crazy or nuts. The only impetus would have been to make money. This wasn't about making money."