I don’t think I’ve ever felt as depressed
walking out of a movie theatre as I did after viewing this film. Not only did
it feature one of the most horrifying civil war scenes ever filmed, it
also—unwittingly, I think—conveyed such a strong sense of hopelessness
regarding humanity’s predilection toward violence that, for a moment, it made
me seriously question whether or not there really is any good thing deep in the
heart of man.
This film is supposed to be a love story
between a simple carpenter named Inman and an upscale southern belle named Ada,
with whom he has a passing romance prior to being drafted into the Confederate
army. After months on the battlefield, Inman is seriously wounded in a daring
night raid. While in the hospital, he receives a letter from Ada—who is now
hundreds of miles away—begging him to leave the war and return to her. Totally
unequipped for life outside of the city, Ada is struggling to survive in the
small town of Cold Mountain, South Carolina after her father dies of a heart
attack. With the help of a young female drifter, Ada is able to make ends
meet—barely. But she also has her hands full fending off the advances of the
Confederate Home Guard, a self-appointed group of thugs who hunt down and kill
any able-bodied men they find, presuming them to be deserters.
Once Inman is strong enough to leave the
hospital, he acquiesces to Ada’s wishes and walks away from his unit, beginning
a long and perilous journey home that many have referred to as an
interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey. Like Odysseus, Inman meets all manner
of strange characters along the way, some of whom help him along the journey
and others who continue to manifest the brutality Inman encountered on the
battlefield. He also encounters some of the victims of war, most poignantly in
the form of a single mother and her sickly baby who live at the mercy of
marauding soldiers. What’s remarkable is how quickly such victims take up the
gun once the opportunity affords itself, proving once again how easily the
abused can become the abuser.
It’s inevitable in such a story that Inman
will finally make it home to his beloved. But from the beginning, there’s been
a dark pall hanging over this reunion, taking the form of a vision Ada had in
which Inman is stumbling along a mountain path surrounded by crows. Thus, after
a brief, passionate reunion, the film moves into its final, unavoidable
sequence: a showdown between the hero and the evil men who have been
threatening his love.
While this film attempts to use the love
story as a way of infusing hope into this otherwise dark tale, whatever
redeeming power this thinly sketched relationship has is completely lost amid a
blood-stained depiction of a period of American history that is best described
by political philosopher Thomas Hobbes as ”an existence of continual fear and danger of
violent death… solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” This movie offers
virtually no hope to its characters, except perhaps a quick and painless death.
But considering the villains that stalk the frames of this film, such an act of
mercy is far from likely.
Cold
Mountain is a graphic reminder that although Americans love to think of
themselves as a peaceful people, the reality is, the foundations of their
nation are slaked in blood. Whether you consider the Civil War this film
depicts, the conquest of Texas (a blatant land grab from Mexico that is about
to be romanticized in The Alamo), the colonization of Hawaii, the
Vietnam War or, most recently, America’s invasion of Iraq, at every stage of
its development, America has consistently resorted to violence as a way of
solving its problems and reaching its goals. They’re supposed to be the good
guys, “one nation under God.” But how can that be true when the methods they
use to achieve their ends are virtually indistinguishable from those of their
enemies? They’re more efficient, maybe, but no less brutal. Like the hero in
this film, they may overcome the bad guys in the end. But as they stand over
their vanquished foes, smoking gun in hand, they can’t escape the fact that now
they have also become murderers. And if their means are no different than those
of the people they oppose, doesn’t this call their goals into question as well?
In
addition to offering a critique of America, this film also caused me to look
deep inside my own heart to see if, given the right conditions, even I could be
reduced to the type of behavior depicted in this film. Surely not, I objected.
That sort of thing is so uncivilized, so barbaric. Surely we’re beyond that
kind of brutality by now.
But
then I began to consider that the Civil War—the bloodiest in America’s
history—was fought by ordinary men. They weren’t trained killers or murderers;
at least they didn’t start out that way. They were farmers, carpenters, and
blacksmiths, ordinary people. I also began to think about the many atrocities
we read about or hear about on the news each day, also committed largely by
“ordinary people,” and I realized we aren’t beyond this sort of behavior at
all. In fact, since the Civil War, all we’ve done is refine our ability to kill
and maim the enemy, making it as efficient—and sanitary—as possible. So, to be
honest, take away the constraints of faith and society under which we all live,
and I doubt even the best of us would be distinguishable from the thugs
portrayed in this film. But still more frightening is to think that even within
the bounds of faith and society, we still engage in systematic “push-button”
mass murder that is celebrated in presidential cabinets and pulpits alike.
So
if all of us, given the right conditions, are prone to acts of violence,
seeking to end violence through violence is never going to work. That’s because
if such evil lurks in the heart of every person, then it can only be truly
eliminated when every person is dead, including me—including you. No, the only
way I see of escaping our inclination toward destruction of self and others is
by laying down our weapons, submitting to God, and refusing to fight fire with fire.
In God, we have the ultimate example of how to deal with our enemies; not by
overcoming them with superior weaponry—as God, the ultimate “superpower,” could
easily have done with us—but by overcoming evil with good (Romans 12:21). As
the Apostle Paul also says in Romans, “But God demonstrates his own love for us
in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). That’s
right, while we were God’s enemies, all he could think about was how to
end the war we had started, how to reconcile himself to his children. Thus,
instead of fighting us, he chose to sacrifice the life of his own Son instead,
thus bridging the uncrossable chasm between humanity and God—a chasm we created
through our own disobedience. If this act of reconciliation is the foundation
of our faith, can we really call ourselves Christians if we do anything less
for our enemies? I think not, for only by loving our enemies do we begin to
resemble our Heavenly Father. And only those whom our Father recognizes as his
own children will be granted the honor and joy of spending eternity with him
(Matthew 7:21–23).
I hope more people, Christians and otherwise, catch on to
this reality, because I can’t think of anything worse than having to live in
“continual fear and danger of a violent death” as the characters do in this
film—except perhaps to spend eternity spent in this state. And I can’t think of
any way to avoid such a fate except by following God’s example.