The reaction of the American public to the invasion of Iraq reveals a startling ambivalence to war in contemporary times. Confused about its purpose and distrusting both the military and the politicians who led them there, many ordinary people cannot see the point of so much bloodshed committed in their name.

Cold Mountain is very much a product of its times. It is set during the final years of the American Civil War, one of the most important chapters in the history of the USA. It was a period of dramatic fighting between the North and South, and the Yankees’ victory led to the abolition of the slavery. Yet Cold Mountain is entirely indifferent to this grand narrative and the whole point of this momentous period. Indeed, the Civil War in this film is nothing more than ‘man’s bullshit’ according to one character.

Cold Mountain asks three questions: Is there a point to war? Can a hero be a killer too? Is there any idea worth dying for? The film’s answer to all three questions is a resounding ‘No’.

The story focuses on the long-distance yearning between a young farm labourer named Inman who goes to war (Jude Law) and his sweetheart Ada (Nicole Kidman), whom he leaves behind in the small Southern town of Cold Mountain. To torture a cliché, they both have their own battles to fight - he in the trenches and then amongst his fellow soldiers, as he becomes a deserter; and she, an isolated female in an unfamiliar community with a large farm to run. Jude Law’s character, decides to become a deserter after experiencing the horror of violence, and leave the madness in search of home. The true hero in the war is the one who refuses to fight.

It is a difficult task to create a film about war in an age where the meaning of war seems to be utterly banal. The film yearns romantically for heroes but cannot assert what they are fighting for. Cold Mountain wears its pacifism on is sleeve and reminds us that wartime violence is cold, heartless and inhumane. But the film also demonstrates the desperate need in our culture for drama and heroism. Like that famously frightening opening battle scene in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Cold Mountain indulges our fantasy of what it is like to play war - what the sight and smell of blood is like, how scary and overwhelming it can be.

Cold Mountain despises the idea that war has any meaning, but is soaked in the romance and drama of it. The pleasure of it is pornographic in its vicariousness. There seems to be a need for war to provide dramatic tension and strong emotion but the lack of belief from any of the characters means such passion feels superficial. The result is a visually beautiful but spiritually meaningless film.

Minghella is himself a director of romantic pictures and the subject of the Civil War is suitably rich in emotion for his style. He has fine-tuned this signature style in previous films The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley. Minghella does not so much direct a film as paint it. His most memorable scenes are composed of dramatic contrasts of bold and beautiful colours. Cold Mountain is visually rich in striking, silent images. However, despite his obvious craftsmanship as a director, his screenplay lacks the same intelligence or talent. The potentially gripping epic is reduced to a clichéd love story.

And what a clichéd love story that is. The love affair is based upon knowing looks, lowered eyelids and melodramatic lines about stars and rivers and suchlike. The romantic pair hardly speak to each other but instead look longingly as if the audience are meant to guess by their silence at how profound this love is. At no point do we see what attracts the pair to each other except their good looks.

The whole film is laden with clichés (‘The Yankees are coming!’) and well-worn wisdom that ultimately Gone with the Wind did so much better. The cream of these has to be the scene where the young men of Cold Mountain yelp for joy upon hearing ‘They’s gonna be a waaar!’. ‘Ah’, we are instructed to think, ‘They won’t be laughing when they’re dead’.

The characters are mostly two-dimensional types designed to appeal to our prejudices. Our hero wants to fight for the South but rescues a black female slave to dispel any suggestion that he might be racist. The Home Guard soldiers who discipline the townspeople and track down deserters are laughably cartoon-like. Ray Winstone is particularly unconvincing with his menacing look and no apparent purpose in life except to spoil everyone else’s happiness. Predictably, the baddies are ugly whilst the goodies are beautiful.

Although an Englishwoman, Vivien Leigh, brought such force to her role as Scarlett O’Hara that she perfectly epitomised the beauty and cruelty of the American South, Nicole Kidman appears desperately alien to the landscape. Perhaps it is her character’s isolation in Cold Mountain that reminds us that Kidman herself is an outsider to this world. Her character has no passion for war and we are informed in passing that she ‘let all her slaves go’ - all of which suggests a character out of sync with her surroundings. And above all that, she is just too old to convince us that she is a delicate and shy girl who has never before experienced true love.

Jude Law plays the strong silent type but brings no character to his part. By the end of his tiring journey he has grown a beard and got a bit angrier but there is no sense of a complicated inner life. One of the few redeeming performances is Renee Zellweger’s Ruby, the strong-spirited cowgirl who comes to help Ada manage her farm. Her attitude shows up the embarrassingly safe blandness of the other lead characters. In fact, it is precisely her frontier spirit and irreverence to authority that gives us some sympathy to the soldiers of the South who valued their freedom.

Cold Mountain has epic ambitions but no epic quality. The result is a beautiful but banal production.