Brando, von Blixen, and "Balmy John"

I had run out of things to do. So, I made a list of the top five male movie characters and mailed it to my brother, Tony, to see what he thought. He didn’t seem to have much of a problem with it. So, I thought I’d follow that up with a parallel list of the top five female characters. That list didn’t happen.

We experience our lives through the prism that is our childhood, and that culture that shapes us. The predominant characters in my family – in my community – were nearly all men; their renown gained from their ability to fight, or poke a baseball. They were two-fisted men, as prodigious at wielding an ax as at hefting a fifth of whiskey. We admired their stamina, their humor, their oratorical skills – men like Uncle Big Boy, a charismatic storyteller who might, at any moment, break into a rousing rendition of “Face Upon the Barroom Floor.” They went to calling him “Balmy John.” 

These were natural heroes, like the great women we knew whose talents were ensconced in their kindness, and in their willingness to cook great meals and nourish large families. We did not care about law degrees and certificates of excellence. It was the raw force of these people, like the purity of purpose in typhoons and tornadoes that awed us and awe us still.

Movies are a mere extension of what we already believe. Treatments of historical icons like Catherine the Great and Harriet Tubman are appreciated. But they languish alongside the “sturm and drang” of characters like George C. Scott’s “Patton” who assured his men that he was going to Berlin to “personally shoot that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch!” 

Tolstoy gave us “Anna Karenina,” but it was when Gregory Peck’s Ahab declared, “I’d smite the sun if it insulted me!” that our imaginations soared.

I admire the lioness, but we are riveted upon the maned lion, the bull elephant, the “silverback.” Isak Dinesen's “Out of Africa” gave a Meryl Streep and her flawless performance as the provocative Baroness von Blixen. In her cropped Danish accent, she said to us, “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills…” She was exquisite, one of the finest storytellers in all the cinemas; a rival to “Forrest Gump,” himself. Yet, she is not nearly so remembered. (“And that’s all I have to say about that.”)

Glenn Close came close as Alex Forrest in “Fatal Attraction,” vowing with absolute certitude, “I will not be ignored.” Came the ostentatious Gary Oldman as “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”:  “Be careful how you cut yourself,” he warned in a whispering Romanian brogue, “it is more dangerous than you teenk.” I believed him. 

We are convinced of Forrest Gump in all of his absurdity, but can’t quite buy “Columbiana,” Angelina Jolie, or Scarlet Johannson. “Skyfall’s” Dame Judy Dench, better known as “M” – raised the bar when she flat-out told James Bond, “You’re bloody well not sleeping here.” She’s got it; just not enough to stand the winds of Brando’s Don “Make-him-an-offer-he-can’t-refuse” Corleone. 

Can the fairer sex bring it to the silver screen on a par with Anthony Hopkin’s Hannibal Lechter, who ate a man’s liver “with some fava beans and a nice chianti…”? It think not.... not yet.  I don’t believe we are ready – or even able, just now – to suspend that much belief.