LEGENDS OF THE FALL
A film review by Rich Siegel
Copyright 1995 Rich Siegel
Starring: Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond, Henry Thomas Directed by: Edward Zwick Produced by: Edward Zwick, Bill Wittliff, Marshal Herskovitz Screenplay by: Susan Shilliday, Bill Wittliff (based on a novella by Jim Harrison) Director of Photography: John Toll Music: James Horner
LEGENDS OF THE FALL would have made a good silent movie. Its well-worn story of a family divided by the love of a woman is sustained primarily by images and music. The epic sweep of LEGENDS, which takes us from a Montana ranch, to the battlefields of World War I, to the South Seas and even to urban back alleys complete with gangsters, is perfect camera fodder. The actors provide the longing looks of unrequited love, the writhing death scenes and the frail quiverings of old age. In the broader strokes of the silents, this would have been first-rate material. However, now, it all seems rather overwrought and anachronistic.
Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas portray the three sons of a former Union Army Colonel (Anthony Hopkins), who, after being outraged by the treatment of Native Americans during the Indian Wars, resigns his commission and starts a cattle ranch in Montana.
Early on, Director Edward Zwick paints an idyllic portrait of the life of this gentleman-rancher and his sons growing up in the wilds of Montana (Recollections of BONANZA are unavoidable during the early part of this film.). The film patiently, almost reverently, depicts the love and respect the boys have for each other and their father (Their mother, early on, departs for a less rugged environment.). When we first see Pitt, Quinn, Thomas and Hopkins their characters seem to have some genuine warmth and depth. When the youngest son, Samuel (Henry Thomas), arrives home from college with his bride-to-be, the subtle sense of impending conflict amidst the brotherly camaraderie is apparent. Their harmonious life is about to about to come apart.
When Samuel announces his plan to join the Army to fight the Kaiser in the Great War and we see Tristan (Brad Pitt) comforting Samuel's fiancee Susannah (Julia Ormond) when she learns of his plan, we pretty much know where this story is headed: Samuel is doomed and Tristan and Susannah will fall in love.
LEGENDS is fairly routine melodrama. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But in this case, once the stage is set and the main conflicts defined, the film fails to lives up to its early promise of rich characterizations and story. Instead, Pitt and Quinn retreat into, what for them, are becoming stock characters: Pitt plays Tristan--riddled with guilt at the death of Samuel and his love for Susannah--as the same brooding, haunted soul he portrayed in INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE. He unvaryingly expresses a sort of impenetrable detachment throughout most of the film; After years of traveling the world as an adventurer and big-game hunter--which, on screen, is depicted in a long, awkward section of narration and montage--Pitt's character returns home with virtually no hint of change or maturation, as if he'd been gone for a long weekend (except for a beard that makes him look remarkably like Val Kilmer's Jim Morrison from THE DOORS.).
Quinn, also reverts to his predictably long-suffering, self-righteous character that he has used before in films such as BENNY AND JOON. Despite his character's success in business and politics--he becomes a Congressman--he can't shake that perpetual hurt and betrayed look.
Anthony Hopkins provides the appropriate strength and dominance to the role of the Colonel until his character is reduced, by a stroke, to a jumble of facial tics and mumblings.
Despite these flaws however, the film isn't a complete loss. The power of John Toll's cinematography and James Horner's lush, occasionally overbearing, score--which, at times, seems to be sustaining the film by itself--saves LEGENDS from disaster. The beautifully photographed settings of the Montana countryside (actually shot in Alberta, Canada) dominates this film. Even in close ups, the richness of the backgrounds occasionally upstage the actors which, in this case, is no great loss.
Rated (R) violence, sexual situations, brief nudity, language.
1/15/95 PORTLAND, OR
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