I was planning to write this morning about one of the more eccentric aspects of living in Utah, namely the way Utahns celebrate Independence Day on July 3rd if the 4th falls on a Sunday (except, of course, for the rebellious “in-Utah-but-not-of-Utah” towns of Park City and Moab, which stubbornly insist on holding their festivities on the actual declared holiday). However, I’ve just read something on the ‘net that is far more important to me personally than all that theologically-inspired scheduling nonsense: the great Marlon Brando has died.

It is a cliche of celebrity eulogies to say that the deceased was an irreplaceable one-of-a-kind, but in Brando’s case the cliche is a truism. No other film actor has come close to harnessing the expressive and often uncomfortable power that Brando wielded so effortlessly. James Dean might have, had he lived, but we were deprived of the chance to see how he would have developed as he aged. Among the modern generation of actors, Johnny Depp is probably the nearest thing we have to a Brando figure, but while Depp is a remarkable talent that I love watching (and who certainly displays some Brando-esque eccentricity in his personal life), he doesn’t radiate the same aura of simmering, barely-contained turmoil. Depp can play crazy and dangerous and wounded all very effectively, but I can’t imagine him summoning up the blood-curdling, gut-wrenching, soul-searing wail of Brando’s Stanley Kowalski, that well-known cry of “Stelllllllll-aaaaaaaaa” that makes you squirm in your seat because it’s so raw, so real, and so damn painful. Depp may have his demons, but he doesn’t have the ferocity that Brando had. No one does.

Brando has become something of a joke in recent years because of his weight, his mumbled speech patterns, and his admittedly weird personal behavior, not to mention that whole mess about his son killing his daughter’s boyfriend. Like Elvis, Brando suffered the indignity of not remaining young and sexy forever, and like Elvis, he became an icon of an earlier generation that is, like all icons of one’s parents, fit only for ironic scorn in the eyes of younger people. Assuming that they even know who he is of course, and I’d bet that a lot of kids these days don’t.

But I remember him, and I respected him and his talent, even in his old age. One of my favorite Brando pictures is one of his least known, a 1990 comedy called The Freshman in which Matthew Broderick plays a film student who stumbles into a relationship with a man (Brando) who may or may not be a mafioso. Brando is amazing in this film, gently mocking his own Don Corleone persona and having a bit of fun, while also forging a unique character that displays equal amounts of warmth, goofiness, and menace. If you haven’t seen this one, you really should check it out, if for no other reason than to see the wonderful scene in which Brando ice-skates with Penelope Ann Miller, who plays his daughter. He had to weigh in the neighborhood of 300 pounds when this film was made, and yet he moves with grace, gliding along slowly and delicately, in deference to his ungainly body but with complete confidence nevertheless. The scene is reassuring in a weird way, because you know that even though he’s old and fat, somewhere inside him is the young man he used to be. He retains all the power and strength he possessed at 20; it’s submerged, perhaps, blunted by the years, but it’s still there, waiting, despite the apparent decay brought on by the passage of time. Watching him skate makes you smile because there is beauty in its improbability.

Brando was, in a word, charismatic. He was one of those figures that you like to watch simply to watch him. Even if the movie stinks (and he made plenty of stinkers), the camera loved him and you get sucked in because you want to see more of him. There are very few film actors I don’t like, don’t admire or respect on some level, but he was one of the relative few that I call “favorite.”

It is my hope that his death today and the inevitable onslaught of television tributes that will surely come will erase some of the crap that has accumulated around him in recent years. I hope that in the next few days, those who aren’t familiar with Brando might be tempted to visit their neighborhood HollyBuster video store and find out for themselves that there was a lot more to him than tabloid gossip. There was, for instance, the handsome young Brando of A Streetcar Named Desire, who oozed masculinity and animal eroticism during a decade in which cinematic sex was rigidly confined, sublimated, and ignored. There was the Brando of The Wild Ones, who inspired James Dean and helped define the whole notion of unfocused youthful rebellion. There was Brando in On the Waterfront, mourning his lost integrity, and Brando as Don Corleone, tormented by the thought of his beloved son getting sucked into the family business, and, of course, Brando as Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, in which he was just plain tormented. He was Jor-El in Superman: The Movie, so handsome and regal that it’s hard to imagine anyone else fathering the Man of Steel (interestingly, the rumor mills are suggesting that Johnny Depp may play this role in a new Superman film). There was the aforementioned role in The Freshman and — another Depp connection — a sweet turn with Faye Dunaway in the romance Don Juan DeMarco.

Brando’s final role of any note was in 2001’s The Score, which I have not seen. Maybe I’ll remedy that tonight, my way of paying tribute to a great talent who never believed he was all that remarkable…