Surprisingly Great Movie

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2014)

This is an interesting movie to talk about. Right away, it appears that the movie might have been seen as merely a Brad Pitt vehicle and it's easy to understand why. Pitt plays Tristan Ludlow, the incredibly sexy and appropriately troubled son of Colonel William Ludlow, played incredibly brilliantly by Sir Anthony Hopkins. While the Colonel's oldest and youngest sons, Alfred (Aidan Quinn) and Samuel (Henry Thomas), have ambitions to become great men like their father, they do not share Tristan's indecision as to whether or not they even deserve to be alive let alone happy.
Tristan Ludlow is one of those characters you just know is a good boy, really; he is just a bit distracted by some gloriously bad behavior. At first, this doesn't really seem to hurt anybody. But like anything else that moves the film dangerously close to being formula, a beautiful woman comes along. She is Susannah, fiancé to young Samuel, and, as the story moves along, lover to Tristan and finally, wife to Alfred.
On the face, this situation looks bad, especially if we judge it by today's standards. The story, however, is set in the early 20th century and opens on the eve of World War I, which makes Susannah's options drastically limited after Tristan abruptly breaks their engagement after they'd already been lovers. In this way, Susannah was likely to have been left no choice but to marry Alfred since she was not married to either Samuel, with whom it was never made clear if they did as intended, which was not to wait until marriage to have sex, or Tristan, whom she clearly did have sex with when they were not married. Either way, Susannah's situation would have been quite bad but it did reveal a trait of Alfred Ludlow: he loved her regardless of her previous engagement to Tristan.
Throughout the movie, there are examples of formula at work, not the least of which was Tristan's return amid a bunch of wild horses complete with scoring. And yet, the score itself is one of the most beautiful things about this movie. James Horner's score, done before Titanic, is nothing short of breathtaking. Just listening to the soundtrack album reminds you of how the film takes us to some of the lighter, more tender moments of the Ludlows' lives just before it takes us into the darker sides that are as full of realistic heartache as they are good old fashioned Hollywood drama. Except this film makes that old fashioned drama more realistic in terms of the feel and tone and the way it still reminds us that even this can happen in real life.
The movie, released in 1995, was based upon the novella of the same name by Jim Harrison, first published in 1979. While no adaptation is completely true to the book, there are still some significant departures from the book that the movie took (i.e. Tristan and Susannah were indeed married in the novella but divorced), but it still worked. It's hard to explain in only a few sentences how the movie managed to work despite some differences from the novella, but it did.
One of the film's most stunning features was the cinematography. There just aren't a lot of films with cinematography as breathtaking as it is in this movie. Considering the budget limitations for location that even moved the production from Montana to Canada and the unpredictable weather during filming, among other things, this is a fantastic accomplishment, to say the least.
Everyone in the cast gave a performance that made you forget you were watching Sir Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond, and the rest of the cast. You were watching the Ludlows. The argument that this movie, like other formula, does little else except make the toes of the female audience curl for Brad Pitt falls short, as Pitt can never be accused of being cast merely as eye candy meant to sell an otherwise mediocre film. He was eye candy alright but he also played Tristan Ludlow so believably that I doubt there were or are very many other actors who could have done as fine a job. This movie should be considered a classic before too much longer--or just right now.