Marlon Brando, Viva Zapata!

Won: Cannes Film Festival - Best Actor

It is only appropriate that the man often credited as being the trailblazing force behind bridging the gap between realism and film acting should also thrill us in his ability to bridge the gap between his own whiteness and other ethnicities. Viva Zapata! would not be the only film in the 1950s to which Marlon Brando attempted to play a character of an entirely different ethnicity from his own, and, based on what I've seen, Brando's Emiliano Zapata isn't nearly as jarring or disagreeable as his Sakini in The Teahouse of August Moon, released four years later. But Brando's interpretation of the Mexican revolutionary straddles the threshold of my own tolerance towards whitewashing - for at what point does it become a little too silly, thereby taking the viewer "out" of the picture?

I'm a particular moviegoer. And there're a number of things I'm loath to accept about a film. Though I'd say that at the top of my list, I'm generally not fond of male-driven narratives and long historical biopics. Somewhere in the middle would sit "negligent uses of accents." Viva Zapata! checks all three of these boxes, and the sight of so many crusty men emulating Mexicans by way of mustaches, sombreros and pristine American English is a hard pill to swallow for a viewer who is admittedly unforgiving when it comes to his ownmodern sensitivities.

There's a lot for me to un-package with this performance; I will start by saying that Brando's acting is pretty good, if we were to forget about the issue of ethnicity from the context of this film. Having taken the world by storm just one year prior in A Streetcar Named Desire, Brando brings some of that fluid energy here, traipsing through the film with a quiet yet conspicuous severity bubbling beneath him. Occasional bursts of emotion, such as his bit regarding the hungry child, infuses a dreadfully dull movie with some needed chutzpah. Underneath all that Mexican drag and bronzer still exists a consummate actor capable of drawing your unfeigned attention, even if he is woefully inappropriate for the part.

However, I'm still largely indifferent to this performance. At the end of the day, this is a tale of an important figure and time in Mexican history - a tale that just so happens to feature a barrage of white-skinned Americans made up to look brown, all donning the necessary cultural garb to make a viewer feel as though those involved with this film are actually participating in an advanced Halloween bash. This takes the narrative beyond belief, and no amount of Method acting from Brando can shake the grime of farcicality that weighs heavily upon every scene, every facial expression, every close-up. Brando could very well have tapped into the psyche of the character and convinced himself that he was Emiliano Zapata, but his surroundings offset the realism he presents to the screen. (It should be noted that Brando too felt this film was lacking in authenticity!)

I just hated Viva Zapata! - I didn't care for the kooky juxtaposition of a bunch of grown, American men playing literal dress-up against Brando's all-too-serious Method acting. I was confused, during one extended scene in which Brando is topless looking yonder from his window, as to why I was suddenly witness to a Mexican Stanley Kowalski ("He may have brown skin, but he can still be a sex symbol everyone!" thought Darryl Zanuck, surely). Brando does a solid job here, and there's not a single moment during his performance to which you might feel as though he's completely phoning it in. I'd say that he believed in what he was doing; I just found myself unable to believe in him. Overall, a good performance that is a byproduct of an intrinsically flawed film.