Hewing closely to the spirit of Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel, the movie is a somber, often downbeat depiction of human savagery and treachery as well as of human kindness. Writer-director Anthony Minghella has meticulously crafted an intimate epic that, while it does have a somewhat cerebral tone, is clearly determined to translate Frazier's vision of human hope amid great brutality to the screen. Nicole Kidman is allowed to look entirely too glamorous for the period and her character's dire situation, but she does capture the yearning and hopes of a young woman waiting for her soldier to return from an increasingly senseless war.

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