Beautiful Scenery, Badly Chewed Up (***Spoilers***)

Rating: 7/10 (20 October 2002)

In the years just prior to WWI Colonel Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) retires from the Army in protest to their treatment of Native Americans, and settles his family deep in the Montana Rockies. His Eastern-bred wife can't adapt and quickly departs leaving a family dynamic right out of the TV show, "Bonanza". The patriarch aided by his three adult sons and assorted ranch hands, living the good life in splendid isolation. The oldest son (Aidan Quinn) is stolid, modern and business-like, the middle son (Brad Pitt) lives in close spiritual kinship with elements of the disappearing frontier, and the youngest son (Henry Thomas) is, of course, the family idealist. The family idyll is routinely disrupted by trouble, first by the arrival of the youngest son's betrothed (Julia Ormond), with whom the other two sons fall in love, then by the outbreak of WWI (all three sons volunteer for combat via Canada). And this is just for starters; the bad things inflicted on the family are right out of a Thomas Hardy novel; accidents, murder, suicide, racial conflict, and political corruption.
"Legends of the Fall" is a cinematic epic; big scenery, big events, and big characters. And for the most part, it succeeds in capturing the drama and pathos of this ranching family (and the West) on the cusp of the modern age. The film follows each member of the family, documenting their many travails over a span of 15 years, from 1913 through the late 1920s. It's good, but it also allows for some real scenery chewing by the actors, especially Hopkins. But who cares? Shot against some of the most beautiful scenery in the world and given the staggering events of the story, what else can one do?