Listen to Me Marlon

Greetings from Lithuania.

I was dying to see "Listen to Me Marlon" (2015) from the first moment i heard about it. I won't lie - i'm a huge Marlon Brando fan so i was really looking forward to see a good documentary about the man himself. "Listen to Me Marlon" is a superb experience. Experience, because it is not a traditional straightforward biopic documentary. It is told by Brando himself, using audiotapes that he was recording during his life. We do get so see glimpses and most important aspects from his life from a childhood till the end. It shows a bit about the infamous movies he made. But more it is about listening to his thoughts, and they are haunting. It is like listening to extended version of Kurtz himself.

Overall, i highly enjoyed "Listen to Me Marlon". It is informative, superbly paced and very self confident and fascinating documentary. It is a haunting experience, not for everyone i guess, but if you liked the acting of this screen legend and would like to go a bit beyond the face of a man, "Listen to Me Marlon" is a must see.

I used to idolize Marlon Brando when I was young. Recently, I found his more recent films and physical condition (obesity) to be a true misrepresentation of his true talent. In The Brave, he plays a pervert, but no one remembers that role. He is remembered for the several great roles he played when he was in control of his body and emotions. Listen to Me Marlon is a fabulous collection of tapes played to images (or is it the other way around?) . I teach my students to get the music done first, or the sound track first, and then put images to them. I believe this is how this great documentary was made. What an impressive piece of work. Don't miss it.

Listen to Me Marlon (2015)

**** (out of 4)

We are told that when Marlon Brando died in 2004 he left behind hundreds of hours worth of audio recordings that he made throughout his life. This rather unique documentary has Brando telling us his life story by using these audio recordings as well as some older interview footage.

Writer, director and editor Stevan Riley really did an amazing job here because it couldn't have been easy to take all of these audio recordings and put them into a "story" that it's clear and makes sense. The documentary covers Brando's early years with his parents and then gets into his movie career where it's clear the actor wasn't his fondest fan. Films like ON THE WATERFRONT, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, THE GODFATHER and LAST TANGO IN Paris get some great talk but there's also some great audio footage dealing with Brando's "lost" period in the 60s when he was basically just doing films for the money.

Brando's life had all sorts of bad things happen including the various issues with is son and daughter. Those sad topics are covered here as well as other issues including his battle over the treatment of Indians. If you're a fan of Brando then you're certainly going to love this documentary because, well, the actor was a rather private person and didn't give too many interviews so it was great getting to hear his thoughts on life, himself and of course the movies.

This documentary is full of many bits and pieces from Brando's life and career. I found it all most fascinating, and agree it's a good documentary.

What I found less fulfilling was the choice to use a patchwork approach to its formal structure It jumped around quite a bit, skimming over surfaces; I would have preferred a more chronological, in-depth approach--but that's my own opinion.

For instance, Brando got a lot of "bad press flack" for his so-called "erratic behavior" in "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Apacolypse Now." This documentary had an opportunity to clarify the controversy, but didn't.

What was a treat, though, was viewing live footage of Stellar Adler at work in the formative U.S. stages of teaching the "Method," along with samplings of Stanislavsky's initial philosophy on acting technique.

The inclusion of scene clips from Brando's various films were also engaging, though a number of his films were omitted (perhaps by not having the studios' approval). The reported clash between Brando's training and Chaplin's directing style was also not covered, only snippets from "A Countess from Hong Kong" were shown.

Finally, Brando's having a 3D image of his likeness was shown, but it wasn't made too clear exactly what he envisioned the final utilized product would be. Again, this documentary brought up many fascinating topics and then didn't really demonstrate their significance.

On leaving this film, I thought, "here's a topic that could be made into a larger, three-part work and probably still have much footage to spare."

I am not the first to suggest that Marlon Brando was more interesting than the characters he played, including Stanley Kowalski and Terry Malloy. The new documentary, Listen to Me Marlon, takes three directors to do the acting legend justice. They do it well by searching hundreds of Brando's recordings and interviews to piece together a fascinating, unbiased look at his life.

They even have digitized versions of his head that they fit his voice to in a novel and slightly creepy fashion. The suggestion that he has come back from the grave is not far-fetched as the voice is authentic and the verbals those of a consummate actor who morphs into different voices given the circumstance.

Beyond Brando's observations about his roles such as in Lady from Shanghai, which he is ashamed of, are painful recounting about his daughter and son. His son murders her husband, serves 10 years while she subsequently commits suicide after several attempts. Brando's public reactions are sincerely remorseful that he couldn't have done more, especially for his troubled son.

But then, who's to know if the great actor is not acting? Such is the magic of his art that I would even suggest the artifice of his public persona. One thing is for certain, the great method acting teacher, Stella Adler, foresaw a world-class actor in her young student.

The glory and gloom of this famous man are all there. The clips from his performances are as fresh and exciting as ever. Those from his later successes such as Last Tango, Godfather, and Apocalypse Now are testimony to his inherent genius that as a fat man (think Orson Welles) he still leads the field (a comfort, no doubt, to such current geniuses as Daniel Day-Lewis).

Listen to Me Marlon is a seamless song to arguably the greatest actor who ever lived. He paid dearly for his successes and profligacies in equal measure.

Regardless of its occasionally tawdry subjects, this doc is for anyone interested in one of the few titans of the stage and screen.