When Legends Fail

Flipping through channels last night I fell on Legends of the Fall, a very odd movie to say the least. It was based on Jim Harrison's novella from a few years before. It wasn't one of Harrison's best efforts as he seemed to be setting All My Sons during WWI with the patriarch of the family (Anthony Hopikins) oddly resembling Teddy Roosevelt. A woman (Julia Ormond) gets caught between the three sons (Adrian Quinn, Brad Pitt and Henry Thomas). You really feel sorry for her in the end. But, probably the most incongruent part of the film is that it was told from the point of view of one of the old Indian workers on Ludlow's ranch, projecting an iconic family portrait

Many of the scenes looked like something out of a Ralph Lauren commercials, extolling a mythic Americana that never existed. Brad Pitt even did his best to reprise Jeremiah Johnson as he goes on a "vision quest" to try to restore his balance. The film followed pretty closely on the heels of A River Runs Through It, which made Pitt a Hollywood sensation, oft compared to a young Robert Redford. Whereas the previous movie held together pretty well, this one started to crumble apart almost from the start.

I wasn't sure what Harrison was after in the book either. It was part of trio of novellas contained under one title, and I guess some Hollywood producer felt it could be shaped into a movie pretty easily. They had already made an abysmal version of his novel, Wolf, literally making the lead character into a werewolf, whereas the story was a about a young man searching who identified himself with the wolves of the upper peninsula of Michigan, retracing home ground. At least this time they stuck more closely to the story. There was also a 1990 movie, Revenge, based on one of the novellas in this collection but I never saw it. Pretty much mano-a-mano stuff.

Sundog was my personal favorite of Harrison, which fortunately hasn't yet been made into a movie that I know of.

Comments

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud. -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!

Dispatches from Vilnius

Search This Blog