Marlon Brando passed away yesterday at the age of 80. Columnists at The Guardian, The New York Times, Salon, and NPR (to name a few) called him the greatest actor of his generation.
Brando set himself above the rest in performances such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront (which won him his first Oscar), Mutiny on the Bounty, The Godfather (which won him his second Oscar), Last Tango in Paris (which he garnered an Oscar nomination), Apocolypse Now, A Dry White Season (which garnered him a Best Supporting Actor nomination).
I remember him best in his psychologically troubled and despotic character Colonal Kurtz in Apocolypse Now. His depiction of what war can do to someone was both haunting and disturbing--a nightmare come alive. It is one of the most memorable performances in my book. Though he had never read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, to me, he became the visual representation of the meaning of the great work.
One of his greatest attributes was the ability to represent a character so fully that we no longer saw Brando, only the character he was portraying.
6:41:16 PM  | |
|
