Too Sprawling And Shapeless

Rating: 5/10 (22 April 2003)

I think director Edward Zwick has a massive inferiority complex . Primarily a maker of TV shows he sets out to make LEGENDS OF THE FALL the biggest cinematic epic the world had seen for many years and it goes without saying he fails
***** SPOILERS *****
The story starts in 1914 in Montana where one of three Ludlow brothers - Samuel - is getting married to Susannah . All this is accompanied by great cinematography but the music is often intrusive and unwarranted . Not content with marrying a beautiful young woman Samuel and his two other brothers Alfred and Tristan enlist in the Canadian army to fight in the great war where Samuel dies . Alfred and Tristan return to the Montana landscapes where Alfred falls in love with Susannah but it`s Tristan who embarks on a sexual relationship with her to the strains of intrusive music , but then Tristan decides to become a hunter on a Pacific island , and after a few years he returns to find Susannah is now married to Alfred who is now a congressman
Got the idea ? Got any of the ideas ? There`s so many ideas in the above paragraph to keep a Hollywood studio in business for several years . Oh and did I mention that we`re only half way through the film or that much of the film centres around Native American mystical mumbo jumbo ? This film makes THE DEER HUNTER look tightly plotted . And I`m sure I missed something . In fact I`m sure I missed everything because I can`t recall how all these subplots tie in with each other . What`s the reason for the Ludlows being so Anglophile ? Why did Tristan decide to become a hunter ? Oh I forgot to mention that several other of the main characters die which means their relationship to plot becomes superflous in the end .
So in the end LEGENDS OF THE FALL is an overproduced mess instead of the epic that Edward Zwick hoped it would be . I`m sorry but sticking a bunch of massive subplots together and setting it to great cinematography and irritating music ( And I can`t tell you how annoying I found the music ) most certainly does not make a great film