• 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”
  • Recommend – I’ve seen the film 20 times