LEGENDS OF THE FALL
A film review by Stan Sawyer
Copyright 1995 Stan Sawyer
I am entirely infuriated. I have just watched the movie LEGENDS OF THE FALL. This is by far the worst movie I have ever seen. Not that the cinematography had any problems. Just the scriptwriter and the director who thought that this was any more that a reflection of the worst of our own time.
Here is Tristan, a rugged individualist, who cares nothing for anyone but himself and his own grief. Now, don't get me wrong here: he has plenty to grieve in the death of this brother and the loss and regain of a mate. But his answer is self-pitying revenge and mourning.
I understand the necessity of mourning as much as any man. Yes, I mean man since it is men in our society who have this particular problem with grief. I have been as stuck in my own grief as anyone I know. I am certain that my desire to move beyond this grief into new relationships and self-understanding is at least one of the reasons that I find this movie so revolting.
Tristan, refuses to face his own grief. Instead, he first is a good student, then good at his vocation (rancher?), then ignores the problem (to the point of totally ignoring triggers like the cow caught in barbed-wire), then throws himself into his sadness (by throwing himself into the arms of his dead brothers mate), then runs away in search of distractions from his mourning, then gets caught up in enterprise. Finally, his "bonded males" (in this case a father and a brother) rescue the man who is still a boy, allowing him to run away one more time from the grief he should be facing.
Tristan asks his father if he has damned everyone around him as well as himself. His father cannot say "no." Only that "I won't allow that."
Yes, I'm pissed off. I'm tired of a society that allows for two types of men: the business-like ones who ignore their "feelings" and the sensitive ones who totally immerse in the grief and pain of life. It's time to wake up, men. Don't let this sort of media/societal affirmation encourage you to remain stuck in the doldrums of life. Life into and through these experiences. Don't let them be a part of your stuckness! Let them be a part of your healing and awakening to the newness of more complete, less self-absorbed relationships. Let them give rise to a new you who can "be all that you can be" in ways that you never imagined.
Tristan wrestles with a bear in the final scene. The narrator tells us that this was a good death. He is wrong. Wrestling with our "nature" in our own death throes is not good. Good would mean some manner of comming to resolution with our own sense of self. Leaving the nature-wrestling, self-absorbed, dying self behind and becoming the fullness of the nature-loving, self-fulfilling, living self who recognizes now as now and then as then.
LEGENDS OF THE FALL is about losing self. Don't accept this encouragement to die while we are alive. LIVE.
-- Stan Sawyer sgs@netcom.com
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