Legends of the Fall (1994)

Movie's source: a 1979 novella by Jim Harrison.
Synopsis (complete with spoilers): Three brothers live in a farm: Alfred, Tristan, and Samuel. Their father is a retired military. Samuel, the youngest one, brings his fiancée Susannah to meet his family, and she falls for Tristan, the middle brother, who is wild. The three go to war (it's 1914). Samuel dies. Alfred is wounded and returns home. He proposes to Susannah. She reluctantly accepts, but when Tristan returns she decides for him instead and they marry. Tristan gets restless and goes on a trip, visiting all the wildest and remotest parts of the world. Susannah marries Alfred, who goes into politics. Tristan returns, marries Isabel Two, the foreman's daughter; he goes into bootlegging (it's the prohibition era). During a police roadblock, Isabel Two is killed. Tristan beats the policeman, goes to jail for a month, Susannah visits him, we see that she still loves him, but he tells her to go back to Alfred. Tristan goes out of jail and wreaks vengeance upon the people responsible for Isabel Two's death. Susannah kills herself. Tristan asks Alfred to look after his children, and goes again on a trip. He dies very old in a fight with a bear.
Appraisal: There is nothing implicitly wrong with the above synopsis. It could be made into a good film, I guess. Here, however, what we get is very much a soap opera, with solemn music in the background and big clichés from start to finish. The characters are all one-dimensional, except for the character of Susannah, who is zero-dimensional - she only exists in function of other characters and it's hard to figure out what, apart from her beautiful smile, caused others to fall instantly in love with her. Still it's a watchable film, because the narrative is kept flowing at a steady pace and the cinematography is good, but veers often to ludicrousness, like the scene where Isabel Two (yes, that is her nickname) proudly says that she knows that Heraklion is the capital of Crete because she had 'European history' lessons with the colonel.
Rating: 38