A Streetcar named desire!

I just had to write about this movie. This movie was lying in my DVD collection for over years now. Finally I decided to watch it last night. And boy am I glad! I am just amazed at the brilliance in performance in this movie. Everyone!!! Specially Vivien Leigh and Brando were just out of the world. This is the first time I have seen a movie to be as powerful or more powerful than a play.

The movie is a simple story about how complicated we all are. Humans are a composition of complexes and differences of social class, past encounters, choices we have made. All of this is coupled with a constant need to seem happy, hide our weaknesses, fight, lie and please. I think humans are always driven by desire. Desire to be desired, desire to be accepted, desire to be liked, desire to be hated. As long as we desire we kind of exist, else we die. A brilliant line of the movie was- "Opposite of death is desire!" I liked the way this line was said it said "Opposite of death is desire", as opposed to "Opposite of desire is death!". It was from the death of a 17 yr old boy that desire stemmed in Blanche, one of the key characters of the movie. She hides her weaknesses, her loneliness, her age in complex ways. She lies so much to the world, that she stops to realize who she really is. She is so caught up in playing that happy, composed part that to her reality does not seem to exist. Her performance in the movie by Vivien Leigh was simply brilliant. She brought out the torn individual especially towards the end with such ease and was very convincing. Brando is the husband of her sister who is a crude individual with no social finesse. He almost hides his class complexes with his physical demeanor and power. He sees through Blanche's pretence, but is brutal as opposed to being understanding of the why. Loneliness, desire and unfulfilled kindness is what makes Blanche this complicated individual. The brutal treatment by Stanley(Brando) only makes it worse.

It wasn't the story as much as the performances that made an impact for me. It seems even more surprising to see that such boldness and characters depicted in the 50's. It must have been a bold movie of its time. I cannot end this blog without giving due credit to the Elia Kazan the director of this movie. I have not seen the play, but I am convinced the movie has extremely brilliant characters and they have more than done justice to this play. I know I will watch this movie several times over the coming years. Specially if I want to be reminded of what acting is all about.