Lost in Translation (2003)

Yes, we are big fans of Sofia Coppola and cinematographer Lance Acord here at Frame of Reference. How come? Because their collaborations are always overflowing with images that tell complete stories directly and artfully, images that satisfy the viewer while also leaving him/her hungry for the next one. They strike the perfect balance between simplicity and subtlety without being didactic or pedestrian. And that ain't easy, although they sure make it appear so.

While the poster for Lost in Translation features Bill Murrary alone on a hotel bed (complete with an undersized pair of slippers), this image could just as easily do the job of selling the film. Of course, there's the obvious "one of these things is not like the others" punchline of the tall Murray among the little Japanese salarymen. That's what strikes us immediately and produces the laugh -- this guy doesn't fit in -- but as we look closer, we can see that Coppola, Acord, and production designer K. K. Barrett have pushed this sight gag so far that the whole film in all its layers lies within this cheap laugh.

It's a shot (and a film) covered with contrasts. After the height gag, there's the fact that Bill Murray looks up in desperation as the rest of the men look down or straight ahead with serene, almost dead, expressions. Murray's look to the heavens emphasizes his height and therefore the abnormality of his situation. Further, all the Japanese salarymen wear white shirts, ties, and gray coats; while Murray wears a darker gray shirt, no tie, and a black coat. Notice how Murray's shirt is the exact same shade of gray as the panel on the wall behind him. And isn't it interesting that this panel perfectly boxes Murray in, separating him from the rest of the men even further? (Coppola must have sensed this composition approaching on-the-nose status and stuck a salaryman behind Murray.) For all the run-and-gun indie aesthetics of Coppola's film, there are also these little details to demonstrate that this film was not designed on-the-fly.

All of this works to make Bill Murray appear completely trapped; he is immersed in this culture he doesn't understand, and he desperately wants out, only there don't appear to be any EXIT signs (at least, any he can read). He is doomed to be an alien, out of place and alone. It is a horrible feeling to feel isolated in one of the biggest cities in the world and know that the cultural obstacles are so enormous that there is no hope of overcoming them; even though Murray isn't interested in learning a lot about the culture, we sense that no matter how long Murray stays, he will always be the Other and, therefore, Alone.

Unless, of course, he were to find someone else who is exactly in the same boat as he and they can explore this alien world together. This shot sets us up for that moment, because we are able to identify with Murray's desperation and understand how desperately we would cling to anything that would make us feel less alone. While that all sounds like justification for a cheap fling on a business trip, it actually serves as a metaphor for life in general. Coppola's film, while very much about Japan and the experience of visiting there, only uses the country as a plot device. We can be lost in translation anywhere. It is just easier for a viewer to spot these feelings of estrangement when the feelings are set in a strange environment. The world is vast, confusing, and full of contrasts and paradoxes. If we stop interacting with the world and gravitate toward what is safe, comfortable, and familiar, we become insulated from others and succumb to self-imposed monotony, perhaps like the expressionless salarymen; however, if we "get lost," or find a way to make the world strange to us again, then we are forced to embark on a search -- for meaning, for love, for excitement -- that allows the world to create itself anew and with it, ourselves. This is the journey Murray and Scarlett Johansson take in Lost in Translation, and in doing so, their lives get a much-needed boost wonder.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's masterful "remake" of Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1955) contains images that are simultaneously dazzle the viewer in their simplicity and break hearts in their sadness. How Fassbinder manages to do this without once stepping over the line into sentimentality testifies to his stature as one of the most important filmmakers of the postwar era.

In this Frame of Reference, Ali and Emma (El Hedi Ben Salem and Brigitte Mira) have just been married and are out for their honeymoon dinner. Ali is an African Muslim and Emma is a middle-aged German widow. This image leaves no doubt as to how society is going to view their union, nor does it leave us with much optimism for their relationship.

The shot is simple enough: it's really just a wide two shot. But the key to the shot is the doorway. It's huge, it's dark, it's got tons of molding, it serves as about as looming a boundary as you could ask for in a restaurant, and it creates a tonal difference between the room the camera is in and the room in which Ali and Emma sit. Their room may feel warmer, but it is also really far away and seems small. They're also all alone in there. Even though two chairs await guests, we get the sense that no one will be joining them for dinner, perhaps not even a waiter.

Imagine how much more optimistic this shot would be if the camera were in the room with Ali and Emma. As Fassbinder frames it though, they are boxed in, put away, confined by their forbidden relationship, doomed to forever be removed from society, looking on from a distance. This composition technique is called limited space: placing a character in a frame within the frame. The choice to show not only the entire doorway but also the wall above it intensifies this feeling. Not only are the walls closing in beside them, but they've also got a huge weight coming down on them. It seems that if Fassbinder could have found a way to elevate the floor in Ali's and Emma's room, he would have. He has to settle for including the gorgeous floor and polishing the heck out of it, which is great because even though the reflection of the two empty chairs reaches to the other room, these shadows only go to prove that Ali and Emma are never getting out.

To top it all off, Ali and Emma are looking at us expectantly. It's as though they are waiting for our approval, like they've seen us enter the restaurant and are hoping we'll come and sit with them. Until that camera moves, though, we're stuck in the point of view of the rest of German society, which scorns them. For the rest of the film, all we can do is pity Ali and Emma as the rest of the world destroys their relationship.

This pity is the genius to Fassbinder's work. By subjecting his characters to the cruelty of the world, he awakens emotions in us that we often don't indulge: compassion, heartache, yearning, melancholy. We emerge from his films as more complete human beings because he has made us (for lack of a better word) feel so much for the most unfortunate people by forcing us to see how their lives are guided by the same emotional impulses and needs as our own. The best part of it all is that he does this while also making the world appear strange and beautiful at the same time, and after seeing his films, it's hard to imagine that the world was ever any other way.

All the President's Men (1976)

Alan Pakula's mesmerizing 1976 chronicle of the Watergate investigation is overflowing with memorable images, thanks to the pitch-perfect work of the great cinematographer Gordon Willis. When one thinks of the film, one's mind immediately descends into the chiaroscuro of the parking garage where Woodward (Robert Redford) has his clandestine meetings with Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook). Or one might think of the bright lights of the newsroom -- it is a film of contrasts, after all -- where reporters hunt down the facts hidden in the darkness, striving to bring them to the light.

In this Frame of Reference, Pakula and Willis show the viewer why Woodward and Bernstein were successful in uncovering Watergate when so many other reporters were not. No, it's not because Redford is really really ridiculously good-looking -- though that certainly helps.

Take a look at the composition here: Redford sits camera right, in medium close-up, looking left to right, on the phone, tracking down a clue. Camera left, in the distance, the rest of the Washington Post staff stands, looking right to left, watching television. Both elements are in sharp focus, thanks to a split diopter lens (a lens that can focus on two points at once -- you can see where the focus changes if you look at the post to the left of Redford), and while there's no shortage of split diopter shots in the 1970s, this one must stand among the best.

This shot is the entire essence of the film. Woodward and Bernstein succeed because they are incorrigible skeptics. Despite being told "No" over and over again, despite having doors slammed in their faces, and despite being hung up on and lied to, they keep digging for the truth. They don't believe the official story, and even though they can't find enough information to convince their editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) to believe them, they keep going because of their gut feeling; they know when they're being lied to, and if this many people are lying to them (nobodys), then something must be behind this "third-rate burglary."

Okay, so you see that kind of stuff in every movie like this, but what makes this one different is the other half of the shot -- what is the Washington Post staff doing watching TV? Aren't they the ones who are supposed to be making the news and presenting it to the public? Exactly. While everyone else is content to believe what the government tells them, Woodward and Bernstein aren't buying it. In fact, neither of them really looks at a TV in the film. They don't trust anything unless they discover it themselves, and that's what sets them apart from the other reporters. And it's all in this shot.

Big "film-defining" shots aren't usually so modest, but Pakula understands the subtleties of the medium, trusting that one well-crafted shot placed after another will lay the track for a brilliant film.

Marie Antoinette (2006)

The first frame of Sofia Coppola's masterpiece is the Rosetta Stone not only to the entire film, but also to Coppola's identity and attitude as a filmmaker. That's right: you read the word "masterpiece," for this film is a consummate personal statement from one of the most important directors working in American cinema today.

Upon its theatrical release, Marie Antoinette (and Coppola herself) got quite a raw deal. The film was dismissed as "boring," "historically inaccurate," "untraditional," "bratty," and "smug"--in short -- Lost in Translation Goes to Versailles. Any and all of these statements would be true, were it not for this first shot of the film.

The above criticisms of the film and Coppola judge the film in relation to the traditional historical biopic, but, as this Frame of Reference tells the viewer, to expect the film to conform to the demands of the historical biopic genre is to misread the film entirely. In this shot, Coppola tells the viewer, quite cleverly, both how to read the film and where s/he can go if this is not what s/he expected.

The clues begin before the first shot even appears as Gang of Four's "Natural's Not In It" rips across the soundtrack. The viewer is immediately confused: what is British Marxist Punk Rock from the late 1970s doing in a film about Marie Antoinette? Well, this ain't no Merchant Ivory picture, and Coppola's not gunning for any statues from the Historically Accurate Advisory Committee. This is a personal film wearing the corset of the historical epic, a corset many viewers find more binding than Coppola expected.

But Coppola perhaps knows what's up, because this first shot gives the viewer all the cliches s/he would expect to see in a film about Marie Antoinette. There are cakes everywhere, way more cakes (and shades of pink) than necessary, and nothing going on save leisurely extravagance. This is beyond excessive, indulgence carried to the point of parody. Which is the whole point. The shot is a parody of conventional expectations; it is meant to be unrealistic and perplexing.

While the film is in part a chronicle of excess and indulgence, Coppola dramatizes indulgence as Marie's escape from a confining and patriarchal world -- French society tells her how she should behave, and she rebels by immersing herself in the only world allowed to her: vanity. There's no other place for women in the world of Versailles apart from childbearing and adornment. Marie tries to escape from such confinement, but finds that achieving freedom is impossible. Later in the film, Marie will again approach this level of excess as the world of Versailles becomes too stifling. The shot is both a critique of Marie's opponents and a harbinger of things to come. Marie is trapped in the static frame, and no matter how much she dances about or decorates her cage, she is still imprisoned in a life she did not choose.

But what the shot's really all about, the coup-de-grace, is Kirsten Dunst's look at the camera. Coppola acknowledges the audience's confusion at the film's anachronistic, hyperbolic tone. The audience asks "are you for real?" and Coppola has Dunst deliver a look that says "Yeah. This is my Marie Antoinette. Don't like it? Oh well ..." It's an audacious start to a bold film that demands the viewer meet the film halfway and accept it on its own terms. For a fairly mainstream film, such a demand is very uncommon, almost verboten. However, if the viewer does welcome the film on its own terms, s/he will be treated to a groundbreaking personal work. If not, s/he will only grow more frustrated and disinterested as the film progresses. But if the viewer continues to expect Marie Antoinette to fit the biopic mold, then s/he is being just as stubborn and indulgent as s/he claims Coppola is here, for Coppola has already disclosed the style, tone, and point of the film to the viewer in the first shot. It makes little sense to complain about not getting something that was never promised.

Furthermore, this frame can be read as autobiographical. Coppola has received fairly harsh treatment by audiences ever since her role in The Godfather Part III -- like Marie, confined in a role that was not of her choosing (Papa Coppola put her in the film after Winona Ryder bailed out at the last minute). Although her directorial career ought to have redeemed that performance by now, there's still the nasty specter of nepotism following her around. It seems that no matter how accomplished Coppola becomes as a filmmaker (and each of her films has improved upon the last), people will still believe that she is only where she is because her father is Francis Ford Coppola. Of course, her father did open doors for her, but no amount of nepotism could account for the length and success of her career. She has proven herself, and, like her Marie Antoinette, audiences need to accept Coppola as her own person and not as a woman trading on her father's legacy.

In this shot, with this look from Dunst, Coppola confronts her detractors and tells them quite bluntly that she does not care what they think of her. No compromise, no equivocation, no apologies -- how many other directors, male or female, get to strike such a pose? Coppola's the boss here, and if one of her detractors is watching this, her third film, then she's already won.

Young Törless (1966)

Here’s Volker Schlöndorff’s assignment in this shot:

- Show the main character discover the violence he is capable of

- Show the main character’s fright and disgust at this discovery

- Show how this conflict between the id and the superego paralyzes the main character

- Get a teenage actor to convey all these emotions

- Do it all in a single shot

- Oh, and add a dolly move

Add to it that this is Volker Schlöndorff’s first feature film, and this moment from Young Törless is downright astounding.

It’s no wonder that this film helped to kick off the New German cinema movement, for it encapsulates nearly every concern of the postwar German youth: what the hell happened in the war, what our parents did or allowed to happen, whether or not Nazi-type atrocities are a one-time thing that can never be repeated, what exactly we as children of these people are supposed to do about it, and while we’re at it, we also have to figure out all that other adolescent stuff like girls, pubes, and stupid math stuff like imaginary and irrational numbers. Who wouldn’t go a little nuts with a burden like that? And we think Holden Caulfield has it rough! Sure, Holden, your folks might be phonies, but at least they weren’t Nazis.

What’s best about this film, which is also found in this shot, is the understated nature with which Schlöndorff handles these themes. He’s given himself a lot to take on, but he never calls attention to the “significance” or “depth” of what he’s saying; he’s confident enough in the strength of his work to let it stand on its own. For such confidence and understatement to come out of a twenty-seven year old making his first feature only further demonstrates how gifted a filmmaker Schlöndorff is.

Blue Velvet (1986)

While this frame is meant to stand as a Frame of Reference for just one David Lynch film, it could just as easily be a Frame of Reference for Lynch’s entire body of work. No frame articulates Lynch’s style better than this one.

Lynch’s vision of America as a Norman Rockwell nightmare distinguishes him from similar filmmakers, because although his world seems strange, perhaps alien, he continually foregrounds the strange in the real and the familiar. What frightens us about Lynch’s world is not that he’s managed to concoct some fantastic nightmare landscape out of the darkness of his mind, but because he reveals to us the darkness of the world we already live in and shows us the horrors of the world that exist but which we are not willing to see.

At first glance, this frame could almost make the viewer say “Awww …” because it superficially represents a scene of idyllic suburban Americana that we’ve been raised to desire; it’s almost as if part of our brain blocks out the dread and terror of the image in an attempt to preserve the myth of American domestic bliss. But there’s no avoiding the truth: as cute as the dog and the kid with the lollipop are, the white-haired patriarch still writhes on the ground, crippled by a malfunction in his brain.

And once we recognize that, everything about the image becomes menacing. The child remains on the concrete, hesitant to venture onto the lawn, frozen by ignorance and confusion as he clutches to his treat for comfort; or perhaps he watches with interest, deriving some pleasure from what he sees -- something that foreshadows the later behavior of Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle Maclachlan). The dog’s attempts to drink from the hose no longer read as cute but as violent; he lunges and snaps viciously, his fangs bared, no glee in his expression, only anger. And the white picket fence cannot contain any of the terror.

But it's funny too. We have to stifle a bit of laughter at the irony of the image; we have a hard time processing cute and horrible existing simultaneously, and the best reaction to fight that off is a WTF kind of laugh. And it is amusing, but provoking that laugh is just Lynch's way of getting us to repress our fear for just a little while longer. He doesn't need to scare us yet; he knows he's got plenty coming up that will make us wet our pants.

Looking at the fence calls attention to the dizzying grouping of lines in the shot. There are the lines from the picket fence, of course. There are the bricks separating the garden from the lawn, and they also form pickets like the fence. There is also the strong, deep diagonal formed by the right side of the fence, leading our eyes off toward the jungle of the hedge, which is important because, a few moments from now, the camera will descend into the grass to reveal the violence lurking underneath the nature's superficial beauty. The beginning of the line created by the fence on the right is extended by the father’s body, which lies perfectly in line with the fence. Then there’s the line of the water from the hose, both going with the fence and away from it, as though it’s not part of the pattern or it’s not supposed to be there. And finally, there are these strange yard stakes that perfectly enclose the grandfather and the dog, perhaps to allow grass to grow back into the patch of mud, but is it any accident that the father falls into the mud?

All of these lines are orderly and meant to keep things tidy, and yet their arrangement in this frame serves to make the image appear chaotic and distorted. And that’s what Blue Velvet is all about—taking the totems of order and turning them into the instruments of disorder. Lynch understands that this is where true terror comes from: the discovery that behind what we revere as normal lurks true perversion. Up becomes down, dark becomes light, safety becomes danger, and sane becomes insane. Whether we’re talking about Blue Velvet or Eraserhead or Mulholland Dr., this is Lynch’s project, to seduce us with the comfortable images of American life and then deconstruct them until we see them for what they are: smokescreens for deep neurosis and fear.

The Graduate (1967)

When it comes to shot composition, The Graduate is hard to beat, which is why this post features several Frames of Reference. The most important one, though, is the first image in the film. Although it’s about as basic as a composition can get, a closer look shows how director Mike Nichols and cinematographer Robert Surtees packed the whole story into it.

But it’s just a guy’s face on a white background … what else is there to look at? Well, that’s kind of the point. Most films try to have an engaging first image to get the audience on board, you know, wide shots of cities or stuff blowing up. Compared to those shots, this one plain sucks. But that’s the idea: The Graduate twists our expectations on us so that our dissatisfaction with the first image mirrors Benjamin Braddock’s dissatisfaction with his options. So, in a sense, by being disappointed with the “production value” of the first shot, we are already on board with the film, even though we don’t know it yet.

Speaking of Benjamin Braddock, take a look at this guy’s face: is this guy going to be our hero? He’s The Graduate? He’s about as dynamic as a pillowcase. He’s just sitting there, staring, waiting for something to happen … kind of like us. And he’s supposed to be us. Dustin Hoffman is not a matinee idol, and neither are we.

Hoffman’s position in the frame is the most interesting part of the composition. One of the more basic guidelines of shot composition suggests that a character be placed on the left side of the frame when s/he is looking left to right. That way, the character has some room to look. In doing so, the camera leads his/her gaze, and by extension, the gaze of the audience, making the film feel open. In this frame, however, Braddock looks left to right, but he’s placed on the extreme right side of frame. In compositional terms, the edges of the frame represent a brick wall, the edge of the cinematic world, so to speak. Add to it that the shot’s an extreme closeup and the image becomes very claustrophobic. This simple character placement tells us all we need to know about Benjamin’s future: he doesn’t have one. The camera is not leading his gaze because he has nothing to look forward to. All the joy in his life, his accomplishments, his aspirations, all of that is behind him … literally.

This composition informs Hoffman’s expression. He stares into the abyss and is frozen stiff. He cannot turn back, he cannot go forward, so he does not do anything. He drifts. Here the film introduces what will become one its main visual motifs. Benjamin Braddock is drifting through his own life, his own movie, and he has no idea when or how to act or take charge of either. This is the posture he takes for most of the film.

After the opening credits, Nichols takes this idea even further.

Here Benjamin gets a little room to breathe, but not too much. The shot is still pretty tight, and even though he’s got space on either side of him, he’s more or less in the center of the frame, which is about the most boring spot in the frame you can put a character. And, of course, it looks like he’s stuck in the fishbowl -- he’s not just drifting, he’s imprisoned.

The composition reveals more as the shot continues. Benjamin’s father enters and even though his entrance brings some light into the frame, his presence gobbles up half of Benjamin’s space. When his father looks away from Benjamin, he blocks half of Benjamin’s face. When his mother comes in, she obscures Benjamin entirely.

The meaning here is not too hard to suss out: Benjamin’s parents are suffocating him. He’s their pet that they’ve put into a fishbowl—he’s there to be looked at, admired, but never freed. This idea will come to fruition later when his parents give him a scuba suit for his birthday and force him to show it off to their friends, thus placing Benjamin in a human-sized fishbowl. Again, he's almost smack in the center of the frame.

Of course, the major conflict of the film is whether or not Benjamin will be able to break free. Nichols seems to provide an answer at the end of the film, but whether that answer is yes or no never fails to start an argument. On the surface, it seems that Benjamin has broken free: he got Elaine to run off with him, and he locked her parents (and their “establishment” friends) in the church. He’s made it into adulthood. Or has he? The final shot of the couple is deliciously ambiguous.

In terms of shot composition, not much has changed by the end of the film: Benjamin is still stuck on the right side of the frame, looking left to right with an equally blank look on his face. Only now he’s joined by Elaine, who does exactly the same thing. The hard line from the bus window splits them into two separate frames, making them seem together, but apart. Is this optimistic? What kind of future will they have? It appears that Benjamin is still drifting, and so this final image undercuts the triumph of the wedding scene. We can’t put our finger on it right away, but in our gut we know something’s not right. When we look at it again, we see that the scene on the bus is so unsettling because it’s almost a duplicate of the first shot. In the great moment of triumph, we feel the disappointment of the first shot creep back in, only now it’s more upsetting than the first shot because this is not how we expect to feel at the end of a movie, especially a comedy. Classically speaking, The Graduate is not a comedy—it doesn’t end with the restoration of order or with a happy wedding; it ends with the destruction of order, of the dissolution of a marriage (note that Benjamin arrives at the church after Elaine and her Ken-doll of a groom exchange their vows), so while there is a wedding at the end of the film, it is not bringing anything together; it merely gives the story more to tear apart. Once again, Nichols preys on our expectations, just like he’s been doing since the first shot of the film.

But it’s this attention to detail that makes The Graduate rewarding even after multiple viewings. Nearly every scene contains an image that speaks to the themes of the film without seeming “on the nose” or repetitive. Although I haven’t tried it, I’d venture that The Graduate is just as funny and brilliant with the sound off.

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

There is not a performance in the history of cinema that is as raw as Marlon Brando’s performance in Last Tango in Paris, and this image from the end of the film, Bernardo Bertolucci places Brando in direct confrontation with the camera and the audience to reveal that this film is about the construction, effacement, and death of Marlon Brando as a screen icon.

Brando may have changed the acting paradigm twenty years earlier, but Last Tango is where he makes his final, definitive, most revolutionary statement, a statement so powerful that even Brando himself could not endure it.

Bertolucci sets Brando up for deconstruction from the beginning, treating his leading man less like the best actor of his generation and more as a postmodern text. Bertolucci fashions a pastiche of Brando by mixing elements from his real life, his screen career, and his character’s life to create a fourth person who towers above all three to form the totality of “Marlon Brando” the screen icon.

In the film, Brando’s character is described as “a boxer, a bongo player, a revolutionary.” At first, this confounds the viewer: is the audience supposed to believe that one man is really all of these things? But then it becomes clear: Brando portrayed failed boxer Terry Molloy in On the Waterfront, revolutionary Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata!, and Brando frequently played bongos during his talk show appearances. At this moment, it becomes clear that Bertolucci demands the viewer to look upon Brando’s character as more than simply the character Paul; we are to look at Paul as “Brando,” and this is reinforced by Paul’s insistence that “no names,” no personal information be shared during his affair with Maria Schneider. Therefore, we seldom hear Paul referred to as “Paul,” and, left with no meaningful character name to cling to, the audience relies on the only name they know: Brando.

This is all done to set up Paul’s revelatory monologue in the middle of the film, in which he talks about his painful childhood on a farm in the Midwest. It’s the one moment in which the incredibly private Paul reveals anything about his past to Maria Schneider, but the viewer doesn’t need to listen to it very long before s/he realizes that s/he is listening to the autobiography of Marlon Brando, and at that moment, s/he is locked in a cinematic experience unlike anything s/he has ever seen before. Character, actor, and legend collide in a moment of supreme aesthetic truth. Finally, after years of portraying bottled-up men, Brando, perhaps the most private celebrity of his time, is letting the audience in, opening his cage to expose his feral soul.

Bertolucci’s film is very much a film of deconstruction, a story of effacement. Desire, sexuality, language, identity, and even cinema itself are all scraped bare in the film, but nothing articulates this more than watching the Method Man eviscerate himself and his career onscreen. There are no masks, no tricks, no dramatic fakery; there is almost no performance, or at least this is a performance in which the audience cannot tell performance from reality, verisimilitude from actuality. This does not seem like the Brando only his friends knew; it seems like the Brando no one knew, the wounded man he never dared show to anyone. It is as though the artifice of filmmaking finally provides him with the freedom he’d always sought to be himself completely: unhinged, damaged, human.

Or so one would hope. While this experience had the potential to be therapeutic, it turned out otherwise. Brando later described the experience as “emotional rape” and didn’t appear in another film for four years. He felt Bertolucci manipulated him, and he vowed that he would never expose himself in that way onscreen ever again. And he never did. He never even seemed to try. After Last Tango, acting is nothing but a big joke to Brando. Late in his life, he even hosted a cynical documentary on acting he called “Lying for a Living.” Therefore, the film acts as an emotional peep show, providing us with a brief glimpse into Brando’s tortured soul before he slams the door shut forever.

It is this knowledge of what this film means in the context of Brando’s career that makes his death on the balcony one of the most tragic death scenes in cinema. Brando’s death scene represents something more than the death of the character Paul and something less than the death of the physical human Marlon Brando. It is the death of “Brando” the icon, the voice of a generation. It is the death of one man’s vulnerability. When his vacant eyes stare into the camera, growing more and more hollowed out with each passing frame, it is as though the audience is watching him close himself off forever. His eyes tell us the sad truth: there is nothing left of him to see; he is empty. The film and the artist expire simultaneously.