Melodramatic but entertaining and strikingly beautiful (both John Toll’s images and James Horner’s music)—Toll would win the Oscar here and again the next year in Braveheart but his best work would be Thin Red Line. Horner has seldom been better- perhaps Field of Dreams and his work with James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar, Aliens)
sumptuous exterior photography that went on to win Best Cinematography in 1994
Melodrama is a description/drama- not a criticism necessarily—we have tragedy in films like Gone with the Wind and of course Douglas Sirk is high art and melodrama—though nobody would compare Sirk with Zwick
Subtlety does not mean something is artistic
East of Eden with an extra brother- patriarchy—comments on masculinity
Travers rightly calls Pitt’s work here the arrival of a movie star – he steals the screen in Thelma and Louise, clearly gifted in A River Runs Through It (also gorgeously photographed in Montana like this film) but this is carrying a big film with other talented actors and being a constant and powerful presence on screen
Not sure about the various letters and the One Stab character’s narration as the story vehicle—it’s a mess formally
Strong period costume work
Love the formal connection of Pitt’s Tristan struggling to get the calf out of the fence with the scene earlier with his brother Samuel (Henry Thomas)
Julia Ormond’s hair
Aidan Quinn is mostly great but that Irish brogue slips out once during that “I loved her”
[…] Legends of the Fall – Zwick […]