Cold Mountain is not, in my opinion, a particularly good choice for Valentine’s Day viewing with your spouse or significant other. Never mind why, just trust me. As to whether i’d recommend watching it at another time or in other company, it depends on whether or not you have 2.5 hours to kill, and aren’t interested in feeling too happy.
We watched, or attempted to watch, this movie last summer. As I recall I ended up watching the end of it alone the next day. It doesn’t exactly have your “Meet me at the top of a heart-clad Empire State Building” ending. But, I will say it was happier and less violent than say Gangs of New York, which is truly not something for the squeamish.
I’ve never seen Gangs of New York…was it good other than the violence and depressingness? Cold Mountain was a fine movie, but it was also one of those where I was watching the DVD display the entire time wondering “how much more of this *is* there?”
The story behind Gangs of New York is actually pretty good. It really explains how New York was in its infancy. If gratuitous cruelty doesn’t bother you, it is not so bad. And maybe the violence is necessary to bring home the feeling, the pain and anguish, but it will make you squirm and possibly give you nightmares. Maybe it’s ok that some movies make us uncomfortable, some stories cause us to feel sorrow, especially if they are based on real events. We can’t go back in time and relive these events, but if we get just a fraction of the emotion, then maybe that’s better than reading a clean description of a battle from a history book. Sometimes we need to remember the brutality of certain events to avoid repeating them.
But you are right about Cold Mountain. It was just too long. I blame the editors. Don’t they know the MTV generation has, at best, about 25 minutes of concentration, on a good day.