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But Brando punctuates it like an impatient politician trying to get the attention of a rowdy audience.It's an extremely effective moment that builds so that by the end when Brando turns to go up the steps, we see what the rabble can't - the cruel smile on his lips.
He's got 'em.
And us.How and why we were in his actorly thrall can be deciphered and is expertly analyzed by this very good documentary's cast of characters.
(Emphasis on the word "characters." Pacino looks like Sideshow Bob, with a fountain of reddish hair spouting from atop his head.
Jane Fonda looks like she's about to head out for an afternoon of gardening.
They're all riveting.)Understanding Brando the man - whom I suspect was something of a mystery even to himself - is much harder.
Without resorting to amateur psychology, the documentary does suggest that Brando's whole life was shaped and colored by a brutal, hypercritical father and a negligent, alcoholic mother.
He played out his mother's abandonment with a succession of women, who gave him a brood of children for whom he was a distracted and distracting paterfamilias.His father's disapproval shadows the domineering Stanley Kowalski, whom he aced but scorned, and the many roles that enabled him to be humiliated, be...
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