John McCain has been getting very cozy with Joe Liberman (sic) lately. Could Ol' Joe be VP material again? Maybe Secretary of State? Just in case it's SS, we watched Cold Mountain in honor of the last time a Jew was four heartbeats away from being president of a North American nation.
Puzzled? Need a brush-up on anti-American history? Think of the design of the highway seatbelt signs in Georgia.
Yes, folks, Cold Mountain is probably one of the few movies where you could watch a Confederate soldier and cheer him on as he makes his Homeric quest to get back to Translyvania.
Ralph, less famous (living) movie reviewers than you have commented on the fact that Cold Mountain was actually a pretty good movie. Your snide tone of voice sounds like maybe you didn't like it.
Well, Bosley, I almost turned it off after half an hour but then Renee Zellenger shows up and does an origami rooster quicker than it took Jeff Davis to slip away and become a respected snake-oil salesman after killing well over a half million sons and brothers and sisters and mothers.
I liked it after that. It starts out like the book, which I didn't read, but Linda did so I can make up stuff, with lots of back-and-forth time passages, and which tries to establish the whys and wherefores but makes it as hard to follow as Jude Law trying not to get hard sleeping next to Natalie Portman.
Ralph, you're hard to follow.
What? Anyway, I didn't even mind the clean sheets that Nicole Kidman sleeps on after she frees her slaves or her great complexion after several years of eating rooster eggs.
I know roosters lay eggs because that's what I so incredibly insightfully told Great-Great Aunt Bees her scrambled eggs tasted like when I was eight. See, even then I displayed a magnificent vocabulary. Aunt Bees was probably old enough to have heard nearly first-hand of our Civil War-era ancestor who was trying to mind his own business in Brunswick and was captured by the Union Army who was sure he was a Reb and then shipped to a prison in Virginia where he finally gets out after the war and tries to get back home but dies of pneumonia enroute. Very sad story and explains why his picture in Mom's living room is of a young man but his wife's picture is of an elderly woman. Call her up sometime and get the full story. It gives a personal connection when watching Jude Law try to get back to Cold Mountain. Remember, if you call Mom, you do not need to press one for more information.
Ralph, that was insightful yet boring. But what's with the Translyvania connection?
Well, Bosley, we also watched Cold Mountain in honor of Tish and Frances being there this week and of Frances' sister, Barbara, and family, who live there.
What?
Translyvania. It's the new North Carolina. Or the old since it has mountains with no telephone wires which would have to be edited out on the Apple software that cost less than 1000 dollars which the film uses and which is, apparently, going to change the face of cinema. Also, cheaper all around than filming the gorgeous mountain scenes in the actual Cold Mountain, NC. Which is ironic in light of a statement early in the movie that the reason for the South fighting the war is to preserve "the view."
But, since the author, Charles Frazier, wrote it partly as an Odyssey reenactment then we can see that the Trojan War was probably fought to preserve the view of Helen. Just like slavery really wasn't the issue in our civil war. Of course, the Odyssey story is well familiar to those of us erudites who have seen O Brother, Where Art Thou a few dozen times. Cold Mountain's blind seer isn't quite as mystical as O Brother's but the Siren scene is a heck of a lot more corporealistic (sick).
So, good movie. Good music. Sting and Bob White (sic) playing hoedown music should draw the kids.
Ralph, did you know that Odysseus means Man Of Constant Sorrow?
Yes.
And what's with all the (sic)(k)s?
Well, if Pauline Kale (sic) can make up stuff about what people said in the theatre then I ought to be able to make up stuff so I don't have to bother with looking it up.
Bravo. Very mature. Speaking of up, isn't your time up?
Yes, but then I remembered this Scottish lullaby that I used to sing to the boys which fits here since the white residents of Cold Mountain in the Civil War were mostly Scottish heritage. Apparently, that explains the statement about the South fighting for the view since supposedly most of the Blue Ridge Scots did not own or care about the slavery issue. Apparently and supposedly. I don't know. Anybody have an opinion? Anybody care? Anybody reading this? Hello?
The Skye Boat Song
(Chorus)
Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing
Onward the sailors cry
Carry the lad that's born to be king
Over the sea to Skye
Loud the wind howls, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air
Baffled our foes, stand by the shore
Follow they will not dare
Chorus
Many's the lad fought on that day
Well the claymore did wield
When the night came, silently lain
Dead on Culloden field
Chorus
Though the waves heave, soft will ye sleep
Ocean's a royal bed
Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head
Chorus
Burned are our homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men
Yet e'er the sword cool in the sheath
Charlie will come again.
For some strange reason, the boys started to doubt this was a lullaby when Alan looked up at me one night and said something to the effect of "Dad, that is one helluva sad song."
OK, time's up.
Wait, I just found this great web page on IMDb. I'll just paste this little sucker in here and get back to my day job.
"Charles Frazier, Taoist writer, has based his book of the same name on the poet Han Shan, meaning 'Cold Mountain.' In the film, which is based on a place in the North Carolina mountains by the same name, Frazier has seen the elusive 'pattern' of Tao in the hills, the American Civil war and its sadnesses against the backdrop of two people almost inexplicably find they must be together.
The subtleties of the I Ching (the ancient and mystical Taoist Book of Changes) are found throughout the movie: When leaving on a train to fight in the civil war there is the slightest slip of a book page with a turtle and hexagrams. His woman (sic), left behind in Cold Mountain, goes to a well and sees the future-a vision in the water of the well that reveals the soldier's return to her. Her vision, that of him walking on an Indian trail with crows flying in front of him towards her is a vision imperfectly understood but this vision forms the basis of the events to come.
You will never see the I Ching treated so beautifully and with perfect subtlety in any book or film.
A poem by the poet, Cold Mountain, Han Shan:
I divined and chose a distant place to dwell-
T'ien-t'ai: what more is there to say?
Monkeys cry where valley mists are cold;
My grass gate blends with the color of the crags.
I pick leaves to thatch a hut among the pines,
Scoop out a pond and lead a runnel from the spring.
By now I am used to doing without the world.
Picking ferns, I pass the years that are left.
Charles Frazier is writing in the Taoist style where mystical things are hidden within the text or characters (as in writing)
Layers of Meaning: Found in Taoist writing including the I Ching:
Men ask the way to Cold Mountain.
Cold Mountain: there's no through trail."
-- Han-shan
The poem above, found on the cover of the book, is a tip: Cold Mountain means the town, its people and the events that shape their lives which has the Well where they try to 'see' their sweethearts, AND ALSO the poet, AND the mystical place where 'there is no through trail' In the mystical sense Cold Mountain becomes that place of magic where the Well can be found that will reveal the future, sometimes in dark visions.
This is traditional Taoist writing practice-many Chinese poems have hidden meanings and references. For example in writing 'The Secret of the Golden Flower" by the looking at the writing contains the idea for immortality as I remember.
The Well, Hexagram 48, is the primary symbol (there are certainly others) of the I Ching's reference to itself-the Well, the well that reveals the future.
Men ask the way to Cold Mountain.
Cold Mountain: there's no through trail."
-- Han-shan
Han-shan and his friend, Shih-te, were Chinese Zen recluses who lived at a place called Cold Mountain in the T'ien-t'ai range that stretches along the coast of Chekiang Province, south of the Bay of Hangchow, in the late eighth or early ninth century.
What we know of them comes from the preface, written by a T'ang Dynasty official named Lu-ch'iu Yin, for Han-shan's Cold Mountain Poems :
"He looked like a tramp. His body and face were old and beat.
** Yet in every word he breathed was a meaning in line with the subtle principles of things, if only you thought of it deeply. Everything he said had a feeling of the Tao in it, profound and arcane secrets. ***
[so, is Frazier saying he writes in the same way, with profound and arcane secrets?]
"His hat was made of birch bark, his clothes were ragged and worn out, and his shoes were wood. Thus men who have made it hide their tracks: unifying categories and interpenetrating things." [This is the pattern or li another fundamental Taoist concept-the categories unified and events interpenetrating.]
http://weblog.delacour.net
Why do you think there is no through or direct way to Cold Mountain? You cannot get there from here-meaning your logical mind cannot get there, only your Tao mind, for in this layer of meaning "Cold Mountain" means the Tao or the Way."
In memory:
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974)
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