Legends Of The Fall Essay

The sun has just begun to set on the non-descript American plains. A narrator speaks with a voice that once likely held thunder in its grip, but has since shrunk with age. He speaks a different language, and for a sequence of moments, his voice becomes the consciousness of nature, as the images on the screen give a sampling of every conceivable natural wonder: everything from the simplest of categories, water, wind, fire, earth, to the most sturdy and majestic lakes and mountains. This voice is intimately aware of how the natural world has affected the protagonist, with whose story he is charged; a story he treasures. He tells the tale of the young boy who grew to be like a son to him, Tristan Ludlow, and the family he observed and befriended. This is Legends of the Fall, a 1993 family epic directed by Edward Zwick. The story is aided by a series of letters written by the Ludlows, and this moment, framed as the elderly One Stab handles a thick stack of letters, sends us on the journey of primary accounts, periodically narrated throughout the film by the writers of these letters. Because of this, none of the story is false. …show more content…
Harrison expresses his personal ideas most explicitly here, but it is like a lightbulb under a lampshade: to see the full light of the concept, you must unsheath it. As Tristan battles his own inner wildness which threatens to destroy him and those he loves, he also battles that which he cannot understand. Similar to the woman in Harrison’s poem, Tristan takes what isn’t his to soothe his own desire. As he passionately embraces his brother’s fiance, with the rich, fiery, indulgent tones of red and burgundy surrounding them in the frame, Tristan destroys the relationship with his brother Alfred, who walks in on this scene, and, sets him and Susannah on a collision course doomed from the