The remembrance it truly deserves is of being a prime example of melodrama done with ardent creative commitment and brawny will that does not lose a hair of its emotional weight through epic storytelling.īased on Jim Harrison’s acclaimed 1979 novella of the same name, Zwick’s film chronicles the fictional story of the Ludlow lineage during the first quarter of the 20th century. Many may see Legends of the Fall as merely as a star vehicle for the then-emerging Brad Pitt.

They would be missing their universal redemptive power. Some may read that virtually clinical definition and look down on movie melodramas as weepy or wimpy. The melodramatic format allows the characters to work through their difficulties or surmount the problems with resolute endurance, sacrificial acts, and steadfast bravery. Victims, couples, virtuous and heroic characters or suffering protagonists in melodramas are presented with tremendous social pressures, threats, repression, fears, improbable events or difficulties with friends, community, work, lovers, or family. Melodramatic plots with heart-tugging, emotional plots usually emphasize sensational situations or crises of human emotion, failed romance or friendship, strained familial situations, tragedy, illness, loss, neuroses, or emotional and physical hardships within everyday life.

Tim Dirks, the founding writer and editor of AMC’s Filmsite, has a lengthy description of melodramatic plotlines that is quite fitting for much of Legends of the Fall. Looking back to 1994’s Legends of the Fall from rock-steady filmmaker Edward Zwick, a multitude of its traits match those of classic film melodramas.

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