I haven't read Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain, so I can't say what opinions of the war between the states are presented in it. In Anthony Minghella's screen adaptation of the novel, though the words Union and Confederate are bantered about, the Civil War's catastrophic effects on everyone are portrayed as the unfortunate but inevitable result of the kind of invocation of righteousness expressed by the country boy walking with the man who would have been his father in law, if the war hadn't changed his destiny.

The first scene of Cold Mountain gives us a gruesome taste of the perverse fortunes of war and spells out the philosophy of the filmmaker. Our nineteenth century Odysseus, Inman, the man who left the lovely maiden at home, experiences a battle so horrible that when he recovers sufficiently from the wounds he receives in the battle he deserts the cause.

In the novel, the battle that makes Inman walk away from the war takes place in Fredricksburg, but in the film it is the battle of Petersburg. This later battle is infamous for the crater, which is given graphic depiction in the film. At Petersburg, Union troops tunneled under the Confederate troops and set explosives, but the explosions created a crater which trapped the attacking Union troops in a big hole, making them easy targets for Confederate guns.

The scene is wonderfully staged, photographed and edited, as is all of Cold Mountain. The trenches fill with blood. The point is none too subtly made. War is futile, brutal, senseless and indiscriminate. War destroys everything in its path. What it doesn't destroy, it wounds and corrupts, often fatally. (War causes hunger, so animals beware: Cold Mountain has its share of animal deaths.)

The problem with Cold Mountain is that Minghella, who has convinced audiences before of the emptiness of war in The English Patient, makes a convincing case early on that no good can come from war. So, despite excellent work by so many, including Walter Murch, the best editor in the business, too often we know it is time to close our eyes or grit our teeth because something awful is about to happen.

Cold Mountain jumps smoothly back and forth in time, and from the home front to the war front, and introduces us to many characters that provide relief from the relentless doom of warfare. But all these wonderful elements somehow don't catch you up in the historical sweep of the affair.

Part of the trouble is that Cold Mountain feels very modern. The costumes and settings are lavish recreations of the past, but the attitudes are ours. In these days when God is evoked at every football game, Inman's remark about God being called down on both sides of an argument sounds painfully true, and despite the eagerness for war voiced by so many in Cold Mountain, Inman's words inform the picture.

The attitudes of the separated lovers are very modern, too. Nicole Kidman and Jude Law are wonderful as Ada and Inman. Both are breathtakingly lovely and give convincing, restrained demure performances. They look great in the tintypes that establish their characters, and they bring those old-fashioned images to life with vigor.

Folks sitting for tintypes had to sit very still for quite some time, which accounts in part for the blankness of the expression and seriousness of so many tintype portraits. Many tintype sitters had very pale eyes. Law has those pale eyes, which work wonderfully for this role. He looks so lovely at the beginning of the movie, but even as the war grunges him up horribly those spectacular pale eyes don't dim.

The war doesn't dim Ada's loveliness. Kidman begins Cold Mountain as a very proper, dolled up Southern belle. She has never looked more beautiful. When the war leaves her penniless and alone she gets sloppy in appearance for a time, but by the end of the movie she is radiant in a new way. The delicate dresses and hairstyles have given way to rugged Ralph Lauren-esque outdoor clothes (pants!). Her hair falls in loose wild braids almost to her waist. Her complexion is ruddier but in a healthy outdoorsy way.

Inman and Ada spend most of Cold Mountain apart from each other but pining for each other ferociously. They wonder how they can feel so strongly after spending so little time together. They wonder if their love will sustain them if they should ever be reunited. The payoff for all this speculation is gratifying and well presented - though how could Ada miss those eyes? But the time devoted to this speculation during the film feels like a very contemporary dilemma. In such a remote corner of the world, fed by faith, and with war raging, did young lovers doubt the strength and fated attraction they felt for each other? I hope not.

In one very wonderful scene, Ada holds a mirror over her shoulder and looks down a well to see a vision of her future. Her neighbors convince her that the well offers up these visions. Ada is granted a vision, and she clings to it. That's an old-fashioned, superstitious behavior that feels so right but also feels almost out of place in Cold Mountain.

Rene Zellwegger feels out of place when she first steps into frame. Her performance as Ruby Thewes, a rough-and-tumble farmworker, is broader and more comic than what has come before, but her presence is such a relief. She offers hope and stubbornness as well as comedy. Also, it is a relief to hear a real Southern accent. Her friendship with Ada, a dose of modern feminism, gives the war on Cold Mountain some warmth.

The women's relationship to Ruby's father and his vagabond musician deserters also warm Cold Mountain. Brendan Gleeson, Jack White and Ethan Suplee bring smiles and great tunes to Cold Mountain. Other standout supporting performances are given by Philip Seymour Hoffman as a corrupt preacher, Eileen Atkins as a mountain woman and Kathy Baker as one of Ada's neighbors.

The war and the Home Guard just won't let these people be. Cold Mountain is lovely to look at, but beware that magnificent ugliness is always lurking just around the bend in the road.