'Listen To Me Marlon' A Review

Listen To Me Marlon is a documentary about actor Marlon Brando. The film is a series of personal audio recordings made by the actor cut with home movies, archived material, and a computer animated bust of the actor. The film is lyrical and non-liner, jumping through time and using music, image, and the actors own contradictory musings in order to evoke a more compelling and truthful idea of Brando than a more rudimentary chronological narrative would have been capable. The film focuses on who he was rather than what he did and because of that we actually feel we get to know him.

The confessional almost audio-diary nature of Brando's recordings, which provide the backbone if not the entire landscape for the film, offer an insightful unvarnished look at the man behind all the stories and suppositions. He describes his conflicts with acting, at times supporting the healing and cathartic qualities of the stage and screen and other times deriding it as mere deception and pretense. He talks about his process, finding honesty in performance, as well as denouncing the profession as utterly false. He craves solitude but seeks adoration. Lauds the opportunities he was given but scoffs at the individuals that provided them. On and on.

What emerges is not clear but mercurial, not logical but poetic. A captivating almost haunting portrait of a complex artist.

See It.