Cold Mountain

Not to be all woe-is-me but I really wish I weren't sick this week. There is a lot of stuff I need to do, and I am finding it really hard to stop (or even slow down) and rest. I am in the pregnant mommy mindset and am so conditioned to ignore my random complaints and ailments that even though I know I should probably be taking it easy it's hard to do so. My parents taught me that illness is your body's way of slowing you down when you are putting too much pressure on yourself.

Anyway, I have to go back to work today, even though I'm not really ready and I feel guilty for exposing others to my contagious swine flu germs.

On a completely different note... last night Matt stayed home (usually on Tuesdays he does guy stuff) and we watched Cold Mountain. I have been wanting to see this movie for a while, primarily because the editor (Walter Murch) is one of my heroes in the film industry, and also because I have heard a lot about it and how great it is.

I don't think it fell short of any of the reviews I had heard, although for some reason, no matter what character he plays, I still hate Jude Law and have trouble loving his characters. The whole main love story was a little Romeo and Juliet-esque for my taste. It's not that I don't believe people can fall in love so quickly and completely... I do believe that, it happens all the time. What I don't believe is that they can then spend multiple years apart obsessing about each other with no communication and then come back together and so quickly fall back into love after so much has changed. I don't know, perhaps I am too much of a cynic, but I didn't connect as much with the main love story. It probably doesn't help that we are currently watching the show Rome which (I feel) has a much better example of this same dynamic (a husband returning to his wife after 8 years of war and her believing him to be dead). Of course TV shows have a lot more time in which to develop more realistic situations and characters.

There was one really fantastic and heartbreaking scene in the movie (I cried a little bit) where Jude Law's character comes to stay at a house where a widow and her sick baby are living. She lets him borrow some of her late husband's clothes and then asks him to sleep in the bed next to her. You kind of have to see the scene to get it, but even though very few words are exchanged it was by far the most powerful and beautiful scene in the film. (By contrast the final death scene was so predictable and cliche that it just seemed like a waste of time.)

Anyway. That little scene was like a little gem, and perhaps it is because of where I am in life that I found it so moving, but seriously... that is probably something that will stick with me for years.