Marlon Brando was eccentric, egocentric and excellent

To be a Marlon Brando fan means to a certain extent being an apologist. For every remarkable star turn he delivered as an actor, there are embarrassing failures. For all his sincere activism, there is a fair amount of problematic paternalism too (all of which can be arguably found in his decision to dispatch Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse his Oscar in 1973). Ultimately, he antagonized many people because of what was perceived as a contempt for his own talent and his own profession but after reading the excellent biography The Contender, I have reached the conclusion that he simply had a profound discomfort with it.

Of course, there were many ways in which Brando enjoyed the spoils of his fame -- his womanizing for example -- but he also felt deeply uncomfortable and later troubled by it. I'm convinced that his protestations against the sycophancy towards celebrity came from a very real place.

He felt guilty about the amount of attention and adulation he was getting -- especially because acting came naturally to him. He was proclaimed brilliant so early and so often (and he was) that he found it hard to really gain perspective on his own work (hence his tendency to dismiss it). 

Brando became preoccupied with wanting to do something more substantive with his life -- and while he was routinely vilified for this -- today his anti-fame crusade seems both admirable and revolutionary. He simply utterly refused to be phony, in an industry that rewarded a lack of authenticity.

And, even if he was ambiguous about acting and the movie business in particular -- he almost never gave a totally phoned-in performance and never less than an interesting once.  

He has a great observation about screen performance in the excellent documentary Listen to Me Marlon, about how the 30-foot frame captures every flicker of expression and it's better to be real and honest on-screen because the audience can see when you're faking it.

In his best performances -- from A Streetcar Named Desire to On the Waterfront to The Godfather, and especially the controversial Last Tango In Paris -- my favorite Brando performance -- he is electric in every scene but also gloriously naturalistic in a way that few other actors ever have been.

I came of age in Brando's wake -- I probably saw him for the first time in The Freshman -- and so it should have been easy to take his work for granted, especially since I had the benefit of growing up with De Niro, Pacino, Hackman, Hoffman and Nicholson. But I always 'got' Brando, even as a kid.

I'll always remember how much he excited my high schoolmates when we watched Streetcar for English class. The boys wanted to be him (which is problematic considering how monstrous his character was) and the girls wanted him. Now all these years later -- I miss him. 

He lived a very long life (he died at 80 in 2004), and post-Apocalypse Now his work is mostly forgettable -- but I wish there were still actors doing the kind of virtuoso work he did. You see flashes of it Gosling or Joaquin Phoenix and especially Michael B. Jordan.

But there will never be another like Brando, and maybe there can't be.