Spoilers herein.
I really appreciate what Brando has done for film. I rank him with the greats for inventing how we dream: with Welles, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Kubrick. He brought to film a style of acting that revolutionized film acting: the technique of adding an extra dimension of the actor's person to that of the character.
His `Streetcar' was a revolution, and if he stopped there still would have mattered. But he ran out of directors that knew how to challenge him. So he shifted gears and came up with the `Godfather' approach. Here he added a third dimension. He played an actor playing a character who is playing a role. Everything in that film took its operatic tone from Brando's bold innovation.
What to do next? Add another dimension or two of course. He doesn't care about the story, or whether the director knows his stuff, or even whether the picture is good. He only cares about his own quest. So we have here Brando playing the model of the Godfather role, while playing the role as a metarole. The story -- such as it is -- involves a beginner at film school, and a huge con. It actually contains the line: `there are so many levels to this thing, you can't imagine.' It features a poem about a man in a yellow hat and a doorway on Boylston Street, about roles, illusions and memory.
If you forget about the film (a pleasurable feast which is not what it seems) and focus on what Brando is actually doing, you'll be treated to a work of genius. His next project along these lines was the `Demarco' project which deals more directly with actors acting roles that invent realities that other actors and their characters can enter. The intelligent Mr. Depp. I can think of only a small handful of actors that even care what this is all about. Broderick is nearly one: too bad for us he can't build a life in film and retreats to the stage instead. (Penelope is only here because she was his girlfriend.)
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.
I really appreciate what Brando has done for film. I rank him with the greats for inventing how we dream: with Welles, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Kubrick. He brought to film a style of acting that revolutionized film acting: the technique of adding an extra dimension of the actor's person to that of the character.
His `Streetcar' was a revolution, and if he stopped there still would have mattered. But he ran out of directors that knew how to challenge him. So he shifted gears and came up with the `Godfather' approach. Here he added a third dimension. He played an actor playing a character who is playing a role. Everything in that film took its operatic tone from Brando's bold innovation.
What to do next? Add another dimension or two of course. He doesn't care about the story, or whether the director knows his stuff, or even whether the picture is good. He only cares about his own quest. So we have here Brando playing the model of the Godfather role, while playing the role as a metarole. The story -- such as it is -- involves a beginner at film school, and a huge con. It actually contains the line: `there are so many levels to this thing, you can't imagine.' It features a poem about a man in a yellow hat and a doorway on Boylston Street, about roles, illusions and memory.
If you forget about the film (a pleasurable feast which is not what it seems) and focus on what Brando is actually doing, you'll be treated to a work of genius. His next project along these lines was the `Demarco' project which deals more directly with actors acting roles that invent realities that other actors and their characters can enter. The intelligent Mr. Depp. I can think of only a small handful of actors that even care what this is all about. Broderick is nearly one: too bad for us he can't build a life in film and retreats to the stage instead. (Penelope is only here because she was his girlfriend.)
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.