What would this movie be like without Brando?

Brando was brilliant, probably his finest screen performance.

Well, this movie is more of a character/life study and it was going to be good/bad depending on the strengths of its star. There are many movies that are centered around a central performance that will carry the movie or break the movie if done poorly, LTIP is in that category. Obviously Brando nailed it and if he was horrible in it than the movie would have sucked, because when you have almost all of the screen time carried by one actor and they suck the whole movie will suck. It is the nature of any film that relies on strong performance by one main character - think of Phoenix in Her, if he had been terrible the movie would have been a failure and a joke, it rested on his performance as its major strength just like LTIP rests on Brando's. This movie to me would have been good with any actor that could pull off such a great performance and carry a movie, but few actors can carry a movie on their shoulders and few actors could have carried LTIP.

The appeal to me was in the content and what this film explored. Very few films cover the realities and dangers of a purely sexual relationship - though many of us have had them myself included - they are never really shown on screen with any intricacy. Also the reality that many people escape pain through sex as Brando's character does is explored in film, but usually with some sort of fatality to it, it is shown on a very one-dimensional plane, you never see a person actually work through that pain or ever overcoming it. I also have never seen with such reality and intensity (as in the last 30 minutes) of when reality can enter these purely sexual trysts and turn into a nightmare - obviously not usually ending as LTIP did - but the feelings of immediate horror do happen. And also the idea of the nature of "love" and how our hearts can so easily deceive us and how sex can be easily confused with love and how having something that seems unattainable can make us think we have feelings of love, all very real phenomena not often explored in depth in film. And further the idea of usury and debasement, now it has been studied as to why a lot of women sexually enjoy debasement, which this woman does she keeps coming back for more, but in the end Brando's character was incredibly damaged and suffering, and in the end the idea of the female being used gets turned on its head when the realization was that she had just been using and taking advantage of a damaged man. The ideas of double usury have been explored from time to time in film - the recent Don Jon being an example of it done well in my opinion - but it also a common theme in reality that film genuinely ignores going for a one-dimensional good guy/bad guy story without the grey area that LTIP nails down so well, the ending really driving the nail home.

This film covers so many aspects of sex and love without ever getting one-dimensional or cliched - it actually turns the cliches on their heads. The film obviously was very ambitious in its content, which is why it got the critical acclaim it got. Some may think it failed in those objectives and that is fine, not every expression speaks the way it intends to an audience, but the themes explored in this movie are what made it interesting to me. I just watched it for the first time not expecting much out of it and was reeling at the end. It is definitely a film that has stayed with me for days and gotten in my head, and when a film does that to me I can't help but deny it is good. And obviously Brando brought what was needed to the role, and if the lead actor had failed the film may not have translated because I would have been so aware of the bad acting to pay attention, and luckily Brando did an excellent job, but his performance is just one reason I enjoyed the film.

What would this movie be like without Brando? In one word: BORING. Every time Brando left the frame and that joker entered, I felt terribly bored, and waited eagerly for Brando to show up again. I doubt anyone would have flocked to watch this movie if Brando was not in it

Yeah, it would have sucked without Marlon Brando. He gives the best performance I have ever seen in a movie. His acting is not acting, it transcends cinema into something unreal in this movie.