Climb every mountain

It never occurred to me that Charles Frazier's magnificent novel might also make a magnificent movie. So interior is the journey taken by the hero, Inman, and so linear the narrative that one does not imagine the pages translated onto the screen.

But from the opening sequence when the ground erupts beneath the feet of a Confederate soldier, breaking slowly upwards like chocolate cake before exploding from the gunpowder beneath, Anthony Minghella's film takes on a life of its own.

Set during the US Civil War (or The War of Northern Aggression for Southern sympathisers), the story deals with a taciturn rebel soldier, Inman (Jude Law) and the long trek he makes through inhospitable country to reunite with his beloved Ada (Nicole Kidman).

Like Minghella's earlier work, The English Patient, this is essentially a romance which is set against the backdrop of conflict; aside from the opening battle scenes (which are not in the book), there is very little Civil War reenactment. For this one must return to Edward Zwick's Glory or Ang Lee's Ride With The Devil.

Having met Ada on a few occasions just before going off to fight for the South, Inman spends much of the remaining narrative struggling to return to her. Ada is a cultivated, cultured Southern belle and is left to her own devices when her father dies leaving her in sole charge of the family estate. While Ada can speak French, play the piano tolerably and generally conduct herself with the manners appropriate for a lady of her calibre, she knows naught of practical management - like how to milk a cow, or sow a seed or mend a fence.

Fortunately, help is at hand in the diminutive shape of Ruby (Renee Zellweger), a straighttalking local girl overflowing with common sense and practical wisdom. The film is as much about the relationship and growing mutual respect between the two women as it is about Inman's various encounters en route back to Ada.

There are moments when it reads like a dark version of O Brother, Where Art Thou? as both works are clearly inspired by Homer's Odyssey; Inman and a fallen pastor (Philip Seymour Hoffman) even encounter their own peculiar sirens - in this case a shack-full of hillbilly hoydens who lead them to a kind of destruction.

Peppered with good performances from unusual faces - including Ray Winstone as the vicious Teague who, as leader of the Home Guard, bears as much resemblance to Captain Mainwaring as Savonarola does to Mister Plod - and a miscellany of accents, Minghella's movie is stern and lucid for the most part and immensely enlivened by the presence of Zellweger and Hoffman who bring amusement to their roles.

With around 20 lines of dialogue, Law manages to create an identity for Inman in spite of being less of a human being than a philosophical/spiritual construct like Everyman or Bunyan's Pilgrim.

The palely loitering Kidman - a different kind of actor who requires more stuff to do or to say to define herself on screen - only springs to life when confronted with the garrulous energy of Zellweger and then begins to relax into the role.