Legends of the Fall
Colonel William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins), sick of the betrayals the United States government has perpetrated on the Native Americans, retires with One Stab, a Native American friend and narrator of the film, along with his hired hand Decker, Decker's Cree wife, Pet, and their young daughter, Isabel Two, to a remote part of Montana, where he builds a ranch. His wife, Isabel, does not adapt well to the harsh winters and leaves for the East Coast. Colonel Ludlow has three sons: Alfred, the eldest, is responsible and cautious; Tristan is wild and well versed in American Indian traditions; Samuel, the youngest, is educated but naive and is constantly watched over by his brothers.
At age 12, Tristan tries to sneak up and touch a sleeping grizzly bear. The bear awakes and slashes at him, injuring him, but he stabs at the bear's paw and manages to cut off a claw. The bear limps away.
As the boys grow up, Samuel returns from Harvard with his fiancée, Susannah Fincannon. She finds Tristan's wild charisma captivating, and she is conflicted over this because she loves Samuel. Before the two can marry, Samuel abruptly tells his family he is leaving for Calgary to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and serve `England` in the fight against Germany. Much to their father's displeasure, Alfred and Tristan go off to war with him.
During World War I, the brothers find themselves in the 10th Battalion, CEF. Alfred, commissioned as an officer, leads a mass charge into no man's land, possibly an offensive during the 2nd Battle of Ypres (see below), although the date in the narration is given as February 1915, rather than the actual date of April-May. Tristan abandons his own unit to be by Samuel's side. The attack is repulsed with heavy casualties, and Alfred is wounded. While visiting Alfred in the field hospital, Tristan learns that Samuel has volunteered for a dangerous courier mission. He rushes off frantically to protect his younger brother but arrives too late to save him from being gassed and fatally machine gunned. Devastated, Tristan kills the gunners with his pistol and holds Samuel until he dies. Then, in tears, Tristan cuts out Samuel's heart, which he sends home to be buried on his father's ranch. (The viewer is left to assume that this is an Indian tradition that Tristan learned from One Stab per the beginning of the movie—that cutting out Samuel's heart freed his spirit.) Seething with hatred, Tristan single-handedly raids behind German lines. To the horror of his fellow soldiers, he returns to camp the following morning with the scalps of many German soldiers hanging around his neck. He is discharged from army service but cannot go home yet. (A deleted scene on the DVD shows him as a patient in a psychiatric hospital.) In the meantime, Alfred returns to Montana and proposes marriage to Susannah, but she declines.
Tristan returns home, where Susannah finds him weeping over Samuel's grave. Trying to comfort him, they become lovers. A jealous Alfred confronts Tristan and later leaves to make his name in Helena. Tristan's relationship with Susannah is doomed by his guilt and pain over failing to protect Samuel, as well as his feelings of responsibility for driving Alfred away. These demons force him to leave the family home, and they chase him all over the globe. Back at the ranch, Susannah waits for him. Finally, she receives a letter from him: "All we had is dead. As I am dead. Marry another." Alfred finds her weeping on the porch and tries to comfort her. Colonel Ludlow walks out onto the porch to find Alfred soothing Susannah, and the two have a huge falling out. Colonel Ludlow has a stroke later. He doesn't speak for years, and the ranch deteriorates. Eventually, Susannah agrees to marry Alfred, who is now a congressman. Alfred's business and politics cause him to become embroiled with the O'Banion brothers, Irish bootleggers and gangsters.
Tristan finally returns from his world travels during Prohibition, bringing life back to the ranch and his father. He accepts Susannah's marriage to Alfred, falls in love with and marries Isabel Two, and they have two children. Life seems to settle into an air of normality as Tristan finds solace in his young wife and children. During Prohibition, Tristan becomes involved in small-scale smuggling bootleg liquor and finds himself at odds with the O'Banion brothers, who are also bootleggers. Tristan's wife is accidentally killed by a corrupt police officer working for the O'Banions and in a fit of agonized grief, Tristan beats the officer to near death and has to plead guilty and serve 30 days in jail. Susannah visits, but Tristan refuses her advances and insists she "go home to Alfred," her rightful husband. After his release from jail, Tristan and his father-in-law Decker kill those responsible for Isabel Two's death, including one of the O'Banion brothers. Susannah, after gazing at herself in a mirror, then hacks off her hair, and commits suicide out of guilt and inner conflicts. When the remaining O'Banion brother comes for Tristan, he and the corrupt Sheriff are shot and killed by Colonel Ludlow and Alfred as Tristan attempts to protect his father. Alfred is finally forgiven by, and reunited with, his father and brother. Tristan, knowing he will be blamed for the men's disappearance, leaves for the mountain country after asking Alfred to watch over his children. The film skips ahead, showing a rundown cemetery with the gravestones of everyone in Tristan's life, all who died before him. The movie ends with Tristan as an old man in the woods. He enters a clearing to investigate an animal carcass when he's found by a grizzly bear. He tries to fight the bear, but the bear throws him around the clearing and as Tristan raises his knife to defend himself the image freezeframes as One Stab says, 'It was a good death."
