Brand

I'm including spoilers, mainly because I don't think I understood the movie and I feel like I might be able to figure stuff out if I give things away. I am sorry for the inconvenience.
Brand is a British TV movie of a Henrik Ibsen play starring Patrick McGoohan as (and this is probably not entirely accurate because I had a hard time following the story) a priest who kind of accidentally steals another guy's woman, whom he marries and they have a kid (I thought priests weren't allowed to get married?). But the kid dies and the wife dies and I assume Brand is sad but he's to busy trying to be Captain Purity Pants to show any emotion or something. Then he gives the villagers a rousing speech and they all follow him into the mountains before they realize "Hey, he never told us what our reward was going to be." So he tells them death is the only thing that will save them and isn't that an awesome reward? Nobody agrees and they all beat him with rocks and go back home. Then a crazy lady thinks he's Jesus and he starts crying because his life sucked and his philosophy of "all or nothing" was pretty much wrong. Then an avalanche kills him. The end.
I get the feeling Brand would be a pretty powerful play to watch for people who understand it. Me and my tenuous grasp of religion and flowery monologues were left in the dust. I got that Brand was a jerk (he refused to give last rites to his own mother because she wasn't willing to give "all" to God, and when their son dies he implies that his wife's mourning is her "worshipping an idol" and that it's a sin for her to remember him or something) and that he was pretty much insane the entire time (Patrick McGoohan's got crazy eyes for most of the movie). But if there was a deeper meaning than that, it went right over my head.
In spite of his royal jerkass attitude, I did feel bad for the guy at the end. I don't know how much of that has to do with Patrick McGoohan being a good actor and how much of that has to do with the fact that I have a bad case of hero worship (which Brand would not approve of) and a pretty big crush on the guy. The review of Brand I read on IMDB in an attempt to try and figure out what I just watched seemed to think it was just brilliant acting, so I'll go with that.
And, because I am a Prisoner nerd, it would be wrong of me to skip my favorite part of the movie: Brand is talking to somebody who I think is supposed to be another priest but resembles a Dracula (widow's peak, bushy eyebrows, cape, fancy medals or something around his neck), who tells Brand that you have to curb your individuality for the good of the community. My resonse was a hearty laugh and a "Do you have any idea who you're talking to?" There were a couple of moments where I got the chance to throw out lines from The Prisoner (at one point he says "What do you want?" and I never heard the answer in the movie because I was too busy saying "Information." When the crazy lady starts telling him "You are the savior man!" I couldn't help but add "You are Number Six!").
So, yeah, I'm maybe not the target audience for Brand. I assume Ibsen wanted people to see this play and think deeply about philisophical things, not just giggle at references that didn't yet exist when the play was written.

End of line.
-Sally