Review of Legends of the Fall, directed by Edward Zwick

One of the themes for late 2024 is that I wanted to start watching movies that are more outside of my comfort zone. I was entering a brief period called funemployment, and because this blog has become a side hustle for me, I wanted to have some time to cultivate a backlog. That’s probably why you’re seeing this post many months after I wrote it originally.

Anyways, back to the diversifying. Running a blog and reflecting on the movies you watch really forces you to think about how you tend to fall into cycles within your life, whether it’s books, movies, or general habits. I began to see the patterns in the kinds of movies I was watching, but I wanted to break free too.

That said, I try to live my life on my toes. It gets a little too boring when you return to the same comforting things over and over again, and then life is too predictable for me. I like living on the edge and having something new to look forward to.

Rambling aside, this is how I ended up watching Legends of the Fall. I opened up my Netflix account on one lonely Wednesday, my sole work meeting canceled, and I saw this was leaving the platform soon. I was curious, so I looked at the synopsis, and realized it was time to try it out because it looked like stereotypical American Manifest Destiny wrapped up in a film.

And that was how I pressed play. Let’s get into the review, as I feel like I could ramble for far too long in an introduction like this.

Brothers raised in the West confront the reality of coming of age during war.

This movie begins with the main characters’ father, Colonel William Ludlow, deciding to leave the Army and move to rural Montana in the late 1800s/early 1900s. With the help of One Stab, a indigenous friend, they create a ranch for him to live with his wife and family.

William has three sons, and he also brought his wife, a hired hand, and the hired hand’s wife and daughter. Soon after they move to Montana though William’s wife decides to leave for the East Coast, as she hates the weather and life out in the boonies. His middle son Tristan feels betrayed by this and swears to never speak to her again.

When he is twelve though, Tristan is attacked by a bear after he touches it, but he defeats the bear with only an injury. He takes a claw as a memento of his battle. Time passes after this, and youngest son Samuel has come back from Harvard with a fiancee: Susannah.

This creates tension because there’s an obvious romantic connection between Tristan and Susannah, but she chooses to ignore it because of the fact she’s already engaged. Eldest son Alfred and and Samuel decide to enlist in the army after World War I starts up, and Tristan is roped into joining after Susannah begs him to look after Samuel.

After that, they go into the war. When Alfred is wounded, Tristan goes to visit him and learns that Samuel is on a dangerous mission. He goes after Samuel, but arrives just as Samuel is shot. As he lays dying in Tristan’s arms, Tristan watches after him, and he then cuts out his brother’s heart and sends it home.

Tristan then scalps the German soldiers in their camp and returns with the scalps. That gets him discharged, and when Alfred comes home, he proposes to Susannah. She says no, then Tristan comes home. Alfred departs further west, while Tristan, driven by the guilt of his brother’s death, goes away from Montana as well.

Susannah ends up marrying Alfred, although it leads to a rift between him and his father, William. William has a stroke and the ranch begins falling apart, while Alfred, a congressman, gets involved with some local gangsters. Tristan eventually comes back in 1920 and falls in love with Isabel, the daughter of the ranch hand.

He finds a business in the alcohol black market, but that puts. target on his back. Isabel is killed by the police working for the other gangsters, and Tristan almost kills the guy and goes to jail. Susannah visits him there, apparently still with feelings, and he says no to her. He then kills everyone involved with Isabel’s death, including one of the main gangsters.

Susannah then commits suicide, while the gangsters and cops come after Tristan. Alfred and William then kill them, but they realize people will blame Tristan. Tristan gives them his children, and then he leaves. He will not be able to watch them grow up, and the film ends with him, as an old man, fighting and dying against a grizzly bear.

Overall Thoughts

This is one of those movies that screams masculine to me. Everything about this movie suggests that I am not the target audience, and I can kind of see that from the depiction of the women. The women in this movie aren’t the greatest form of representation in the end.

I was surprised by the coexistence with the natives, although that representation could have been better as well. I would’ve been very interested to see this story from the native wife of the ranch hand’s perspective, especially as the movie hurtled towards its final arc.

Anyways, I wasn’t mad at this movie. I don’t think I’ll ever return to it again, but I could see how some people might be really passionate about it. I didn’t care for it personally. It was a bit too bro-like and masculine for my taste, and fed very heavily into those archetypes.

Go watch it if you haven’t and are interested. You might find it worth it!

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