LEGENDS OF THE FALL

THREE STARS – Disturbing

 

          Living in a fallen world is a struggle.  The choices and opportunities for good and for ill are legendary.   Finding our way is the major theme of Edward Zwick’s LEGENDS OF THE FALL.

          Placed within the secluded beauty of the Montana Rockies during the time surrounding World War I, LEGENDS OF THE FALL is the experience of a family in which the father (Anthony Hopkins) attempts to protect his three sons from a fallen world.  Having been an officer in the United States Calvary and experiencing the government’s treatment of Native Americans, Hopkins loses faith.   The depth of his loss of faith is experienced in the lives of his three sons.

          The story is told from the lips of an aging Cree warrior, One Stab (Gordon Tootoosis) and is laced with Native American spirituality.  His opening words speak of the inner voice  which guides a person through the paths of life and either drives us mad or drives us to legendary acts.  Those acts for good or ill carry with them consequences of lasting importance, not just in our lives, but in the lives of our children and grandchildren. 

          When Col. Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) follows his inner voice, he leaves society and attempts to protect his sons from the madness of the fallen world, even though his wife is seemingly not in agreement with his solution.  When she leaves the ranch, the isolation of the sons is intensified.

          This attempt to quarantine his children is inevitably invaded by the dual events of the arrival of a beautiful young woman and the First World War.   Julia Ormond plays the innocent beauty Susannah, who becomes both the center of attention and the fall from innocence in all three of the sons lives.  Described poetically as the “water which freezes in the cracks of a rock and shatters it,” Susannah is played as the tragic victim of both their isolation and their desires.

          The second intrusion into Col. Ludlow’s isolationist solution is the seduction of war.  Writing to his wife that he had attempted to protect his sons from the madness of war, he now laments the fact that they leave to go seek it.

          It is the inner voice in the youngest son, Samuel (Henry Thomas) that calls them.   Longing for glory and the respect his father had gained in war, Samuel falls not only from innocence but from the bullets of the German army.  His tragedy disrupts not only the path of  his fiancee Susannah, but the path of the entire family.

           The oldest son, Alfred, played by Aidan Quinn, seems to respond not so much to an inner voice as to the outer voices of duty, responsibility and the “Laws of God and Man.”  Eventually becoming a politician in a desire to correct government, the exact opposite path his father had chosen,  Alfred’s fall from innocence occurs when the corruption of government threatens his own family.  It is then that Alfred listens to an inner call and  protects his family’s lives.

          But the central character in the struggle is the middle son, Tristan (Brad Pitt), the one  “most loved” by the father and everyone else.  Seemingly living by the power of his inner spiritual voice, he is presented as a person who can connect with the terror of the bear and gentle the wildness of the mare.  His compelling spiritual presence and physical charm serve him well until his fall comes when he is unable to save his younger brother from harm.

          Returning to the ranch, Susannah and he connect in both their love for Samuel and their desire for one another.  But the fall of Tristan is tumultuous.  Leaving the love of Susannah and the protection of his father, Tristan dives into the fallenness of the world to escape his pain and grief. 

          Traveling to the ends of the earth,  fascinated by its beauty yet killing it as well, Tristan takes seven years to forge a restless truce with his own inner struggle.  Returning to the ranch and finding that Susannah has married his older brother, Tristan enters into a season of quietness, marrying his childhood friend and fathering two children.

          But even this seeming peace and temporary happiness is violated by the outside world.  Having no respect for the government and its prohibition, Tristan and his father agree to bootleg alcohol.  This decision creates the final confrontation with the corrupt police and the other bootleggers of the nearby town of Helena.

          Played out in the simplicity of the old West, LEGENDS OF THE FALL presents the many solutions people have tried to find their way in a fallen world.  Some choose isolation, living in a monastary-type exclusion.  Other choose immersion, living in the middle of the political and social world.  Still others choose counterculture and try to follow their own path regardless of the decisions and actions of others.

           But all solutions lack the ultimate power necessary to deal with the fall itself.  That can not  be found by following inner voices, rather  by following the ever present guidance of  the One who came to transform the fall.

          LEGENDS OF THE FALL is a film which helps us explore not only the nature of our world and the nature of  our spiritual lives, but also our inevitable call to involvement in both.  It demonstrates the power of the family and its limitations, as well as the ability of community to infuse both joy and sorrow into our lives.   Though devoid of ultimate solutions, it nevertheless calls us to find them.