Gautam Begamudre Krishnamurthy

Satyendra Singh
Critical Writing
7 October 2016

(Q) Write a 700-900 words long, film review for the movie A Streetcar named Desire
The tale of our lives
(A)
Elia Kazans movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar named Desire was
released in the year 1951, starring Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski, Vivian Leigh as Blanche
DuBois, Kim Hunter as Stella Kowalski and Karl Malden as Mitch. The film is surreal in its
depiction of the everyday struggle of an individual in defining the reality of his/her life. The
movies central theme is to iterate that each persons take on reality is subjective. While some to
choose to believe in the most grounded viewpoint, there are people who choose to live their
fantasies, not settling for the grounded viewpoint that so often ties others down. Societys
generalized approvals of what constitutes reality and lunacy are also put into focus in the movie,
leaving a haunting message to those who dare to live outside the ordinary world of grounded
realities.
Blanche DuBois, a schoolteacher from Belle Reve; takes the streetcar named Desire to her sister
Stella Kowalskis house. Blanche and Stella are from an aristocratic background but with no
riches to spare, thanks to their ancestors excessive spending. Stella is married to Stanley
Kowalski, a rugged practical man who delves in drunken revelry and poker gambling. Blanche is
however not a fan of the reality she has been resigned to live and chooses to live in her world of
magic. She seeks comfort in Mitch, Stanleys friend but gets rejected by him due to her troubled
past. Blanche is driven into a nervous breakdown after Stanleys insistence to drag her back to
reality takes a climatic twist in the end not ending well for almost all characters of the movie.
The film seeks to provide an insight into how every person is driven by desire and how this
desire leads them to create their subjective reality, some of which are socially labeled as
acceptable and others not. The entire film has most of its shots taken inside the Kowalski

residence adding to the movies narrative, a claustrophobic feel symbolizing how Blanche felt
that the world was closing in on her until she could not take it any longer and escapes from the
reality being thrust upon her. The film subtly showcases the realities of four actors, each of
which have chosen their version of reality in the terms of their behavior in the movie: Stanley to
stand for the crude, logical, unemotional alpha male brute, Stella to stand for the docile, man
reliant wife attracted to brutish ways, Blanche to symbolize the delicate, innocent Belle reliant on
the kindness of strangers and Mitch to symbolize the beta male, sympathetic and kind like
Stella but grounded on the reality of the situation unlike Blanche.
Blanches portrayal as a sensitive woman is continued throughout the movie even after her
nervous breakdown, leaving us with a message that this was the version of reality that she choose
to believe in, even after having lost a sense of reality post the assault by Stanley. Stanleys
portrayal similarly does not change a lot during the course of the movie but the inference from
his character is that he has a need to dominate, a task which he finds easy with Stella as the
victim but not with Blanche. Blanche refuses his taunts and seeks to assert her version of reality,
until Stanley breaks her down using tales of her past. The final argument between Stanley and
Blanche culminates in him raping her, after which she has a nervous breakdown signifying that
he had successfully enforced his version of reality onto her. However this was a reality that she
couldnt come to terms with, due to the act of rape by Stanley and hence, the trauma of the act
drove her to stick onto her version of reality. A reality where kind strangers are the nicest an
allusion perhaps to how people always seem nice on the first meet but upon subsequent
interactions you see that while nobody intends to change your viewpoints on purpose, they
sometimes end up covertly forcing their lifestyle onto you (or they at least try to), because that to
them is how reality is meant to be lived i.e. their version of reality.
The movie however has a grim ending which only seeks to assert the real nature of society in our
everyday lives. We see Blanche being taken away to the Mental Asylum in the presence of all
the people of the household. Despite the subjective realities of each being different, everyone
was concurrent on the fact that Blanche had gone insane and relegated her to the asylum. A very
important point being conveyed here is that while the masses may be concurrent on an issue,
they could be completely wrong about it. None of the characters in the movie sympathized with
Blanche, except for the sister Stella who knew she liked to take care of people and that Blanche

loved being taken care of. Yet, even Stella decides to send her to the asylum. This is a scary
thought for anyone not fitting in; a thought that there exists a power within a group of people that
surpasses and could control another human beings life. Although this message is overtly shown
in the movie, it does not take away the fact that the implications of not fitting in do have societal
repercussions and discrimination.
All in all, the movie was wonderfully shot, within a few locations yet it had a telling storyline
with greater subtext beneath it. The composition of the movie along with the sound effects is
eerie and haunting at times but after you shake of the chill that the movie leaves you with, the
message that it wanted to convey hits you hard, making the task of writing a review seem like a
gargantuan task. Do watch it. Dont miss the The Streetcar named Desire