History's most selfish movie hero

Rating: Null/10 (3 May 1999)

"Legends of the Fall" is remarkable in one sense, and one sense only. Its hero, Tristan (Brad Pitt), is quite likely the most selfish hero in the history of film.
We are asked to symphathize with this man as he rips out people's hearts, compromises and then abandons his dead brother's fiance (Julia Ormond), bootlegs liquor during Prohibition--a profession that leads directly to his wife's death--then rips out a few more hearts and lives to a ripe old age.
The older brother, played by Aidan Quinn, is presented as a pencil-pushing loser, simply because he doesn't feel the need to break the law. Handsome, kind, willing to marry Ormond even though she is no longer a virgin (quite liberal for those days), he is still, somehow, inferior to Pitt. Maybe he would have been more worthy if he too had blond hair flapping in the wind.
Yet the treatment of Quinn's character is nothing compared to the film's two worst stereotypes, namely Ormond and the Indian character One Stab (Gordon Tootoosis). It is simply incomprehensible that this vibrant, beautiful woman would spend her life mooning over Pitt or his younger brother (Henry Thomas of "E.T." fame). Thomas looks and acts far too young for her; when he brings her to the Montana ranch at the beginning, you wonder how in God's name he won her affection. Pitt certainly has enough charm to snare a woman, but I think most would be turned off eventually by a man who is so self-centered he has to run off to find himself among the Pygmies.
And for heaven's sake, haven't we gotten past the era where Native Americans in the movies say things like "in the summer of the red grass"? He'd probably have said "last year."
Tristan was "the rock they all broke themselves against," intones One Stab at the end of "Legends of the Fall." That's all very well...for the rock.