There have been few, if any, to beat it

Rating: Null/10 (24 January 2003)

This movie is, far and away, among the finest ever made. The scenery is glorious, the sets are perfect, and true to the era, the script is enchantingly well written, and the cast is on the mark. Many people are in the school of thought which declares (verbally, or not) that Brad Pitt is good looking, and plays certain types of roles, and he is therefore a bad actor. To those people I say...open your mind and watch his acting brilliance. In this film he perfectly demonstrates, and with feeling, the long journey, through the ups and downs, of a soul in conflict with itself. The beast within Tristan, and the beast within all of us, whether or not we care to admit it, is always fighting to get to the surface, often succeeding, sometimes not. The constant struggle to balance the beast within each of us with our own outer persona is a difficult one. Some never show theirs, while others, like Tristan, are constantly revealing it, then burying it for a period of hibernation, only to repeat, ad infinitum. Pitt conveyed this so well that I would have though anyone would respect the job he did. As for the story itself, I have read Harrison's novella, and two others by him that accompany my copy within one book, Revenge, and The Man Who Gave Up His Name, and all three are written with passion and insight into the human condition. Legends of the Fall, however, rises above this and tells a hauntingly beautiful tale of a trio of brothers torn in a plethora of directions over the heart of one woman. If anyone doubts the veracity of such a plot, look to the real world and you can see this every day. The flow of Tristan's life through time, encompassing much of the first third of the 20th century gives the film both context and a sense of potentially being any one of our forefathers. It works as a story, but it wins as a piece of history. The Cheyenne Indian, One-Stab, as narrator, fills in the gaps of the story, and moves it along with the natural skill of the oral tradition. This is just one of the many twists and additions that this movie's scriptwriters have made that works perfectly. The biggest problem with a film based on a written work is that it invariably falls short, or too far exceeds its predecessor. In this case, the perfect adaptation was achieved. I seldom see a movie that is worth watching more than once or twice, but this film tops my list, and I have seen it at least 100 times in its entirety, and countless fragments of it as well. An extra special thanks to my brother Jesse for turning me on to this film in the first place. If ever a film deserved the term epic, this is the one!