LEGEND
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1995 Shane R. Burridge
1985 90 mins
Forest-dwelling boy (Tom Cruise) takes pure-of-heart princess (Mia Sara) to see unicorns and then loses them to Dark Lord underground. With help from faerie folk of the wood, boy mounts rescue attempt. Slight story is probably why Ridley Scott's 1985 fantasy was dismissed as an overblown jumble, but that's no reason not to enjoy the sumptuous vision he brings to the screen. Some may be spellbound by this film--others will find it tedious. You'll be excused for thinking from the start that Tolkien had hired him to make a TV commercial for Middle-Earth.
The thinly-drawn characters of Jack (surely Cruise's oddest role) and Lili are obvious targets for criticism, but Scott is less interested in unraveling a plot than he is in capturing the look and feel of myth. Lili (a.k.a. Lily, the symbol of virginity) and Jack (whose name appears most frequently in folk tales and nursery rhymes) are character types, not character studies. We are never told what Lili is the princess of; we have no idea what Jack does in the forest. Everything is generic, nothing has a definite location in time or place. But I'm glad Scott didn't include any phoney-baloney character development just because he was making a film in the progressive 80's. He presents LEGEND in exactly the manner that the title would suggest--as a universally recognized Jungian consciousness, where archetypes replace personalities. Unfortunately, this is to the expense of Tim Curry's Dark Lord, the most memorable character in the movie, who proves once again that the devil gets all the best lines. Curry steals the show with his performance--it's a shame he doesn't get a chance to do more in the picture. Scott sidesteps his uninvolving characters by keeping his frame as busy as possible. Never in my life have I seen so much "billowing" in a movie before--leaves, snow, smoke, petals, steam--Scott keeps the air alive (I think he's going overboard when he introduces soap bubbles) to remind us that the story is steeped in a magical atmosphere, and also to highlight the sentience of air as an elemental force. The other three elements of ancient cosmology--fire, water, and earth--are similarly dominant throughout the story: Jack swims underwater, breaks through ice, is covered by snow, journeys into the earth, battles through steam and fire, and even harnesses the power of the sun.
Picture is gorgeously photographed, and invokes a dreamlike world. Jerry Goldsmith's score functions so well it's hard to imagine watching this film without it--yet it was unceremoniously dumped during re-editing for the U.S. release and replaced by a synthesizer soundtrack. Catch the Goldsmith version if you can. Film was cut heavily before release, and it shows.
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