A lot of activity, however, is not thesame thing as a great story. Screenwriters Susan Shilliday and Bill Wittliff, taking big liberties with Jim Harrison’s novella, transform his terse text into a glossy romantic melodrama best described as macho Edna Ferber. At the center of the erotic turmoil is Susannah (Julia Ormond), a Boston beauty who arrives at the Ludlows’ picturesque ranch engaged to the idealistic Samuel. Director Zwick was wise to cast the beguiling Ormond in the role, for it’s easy to see why the three boys go gaga for her. But Ormond’s charm can’t quite hide the fact that Susannah is a cipher. Why would this sophisticated woman spend half her life hanging around waiting for various Ludlow boys to come riding back from their adventures?
“Legends of the Fall” can’t afford to delve too deeply into the women in the story, for it must save all its mythmaking energy for the wild-thing hero, Tristan, the movie’s true love object. Tristan is untamed Natural Man, the kind of guy who wrestles bears, runs bootleg liquor and, when he’s not breaking hearts, is literally tearing them out of dead bodies (it’s an Indian warrior thing). His government-hating father dotes on him, Susannah is undone by him, the half-breed Indian girl Isabel vows she’ll marry him, Samuel looks up to him and the family’s old Indian retainer, One Stab, reveres him. Understandably, his dutiful, responsible older brother Alfred builds up quite a resentment; his virtue can’t begin to compete with the wild thing’s dangerous glamour.
Zwick gives Pitt the full star treatment. The camera worships his melting smile, his golden locks, his tormented James Deanish bravado. When he’s on screen, it’s hard to watch anyone else. This has little to do with great acting, but it bodes well for his future as a Hollywood leading man.
The movie, like Pitt, is easy on the eyes, but it’s more successful at striking epic poses than at conjuring up any real emotion. “Legends of the Fall” is fun in a grandiloquent, guilty-pleasure sort of way, but underneath its pretty surface it’s peddling a lot of stale old notions about the unfettered West, when men were men – and we are asked to worship their brutal self-absorption. In the Ludlow clan, the guys earn each other’s respect by blowing people away, a rather bloody form of family therapy. Does Zwick, the man who made the touchy-feely “thirtysomething,” really believe this macho hooey?
