Marlon Brando: Views viii

As Paul, Marlon tries to find renewal in understanding his childhood. The Last Tango In Paris is really a movie about regaining our youth or trying to through our integration of our youth in our psyche, finding renewal. Sexually, it represents a sexual innocence before sin entered the world. Marlon's lover never mentions her other lover. Of course, butter does add a bit of nasty culture into this world of sexual innocence but not much.

Paul is also trying to achieve an erasure of his past through sex. He is trying to purge himself of his sexual past and childhood past. What he remembers is not all that is important. It's what is unremembered. The movie leads straight to the New Novel where things are characters in themselves. The erotic lightbulb, the old men in the Francis Bacon paintings. These people don't want to be people anymore. It's too painful. They want to be things in the sense that modern poets wanted to be things, which is a form of escapism.

In a restaurant, Paul tries to shock people like in the old days, but no one is shocked. Society is allowing more and more things, and nothing shocks anyone anymore. Nothing's shocking. Even the pleasure of shocking people is gone. What's he going to do? He has become estranged from culture, society, etc. Damn them all!

There is a limited amount of renewal that childhood can give us. Freud states that the first four years of our lives are like paradise. There is only so much paradise can give us. It is only in dealing with adult problems that we truly find renewal.

The past cannot be erased. Paul must go on. He cannot go on. He must go on.