Marlon Brando (1924-2004)

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So, as you may have heard, Marlon Brando has passed away. It's a little weird because I have been thinking about him a lot lately. I recently read that he was working on a movie about his life, but I guess that's on hold for now.

I don't really know why I have been thinking about him. I have, if you can imagine, among my correspondence and photographs that adorn my desk, a picture of Brando up in my space at the office. It's circa 1960, and he's appears to have just gone swimming off the coast of Santa Monica, in his clothes no less.

Yes, there have been some jokes about that.

Since I heard, I have been trying to figure out what movie of his that I would review as a tribute to the original method actor. I thought of all those movies from early in his career that made him famous: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953), and On the Waterfront (1954). 4 Oscar nods in as many years. How is that done?

Abiding by my own rules, all of the above and what is probably one of his most imitated and best remembered roles, Vito Corleone in Mario Puzo's The Godfather, are absolutely out of the question. Of course, I always wondered what he really thought of that movie since he refused the award the Academy thought fit to bestow upon him.

That was the thing with Brando, though. He could do that and get away with it. He could do anything, really. It wasn't that he was a hurricane. His power didn't erupt and destroy that way. He could, don't get me wrong, but I don't think that was it.

Corleone, for example, wasn't just a wise guy. And he's also not to be pigeon-holed as the "mobster with the heart of gold". He was a complex man: very sad, very sweet, and he loved his family. He loved them more than anything, and I believe that was the only lesson he wanted to pass on to them.

In the end, though, I don't think that's how I will remember Brando. If I am going to remember him at all, then it will be as he was at the end of his last movie, The Score (2001). His character, Max, is just sitting there at the bottom of an empty pool, laughing and laughing.

That puts a smile on my face.

And it's nice to go out with such an ingenious heist flick.