Movie review of “Listen to Me Marlon”: To hear Marlon Brando recount his own life story is one of the great thrills of this documentary.
“I arrived in New York with holes in my socks and holes in my mind,” Marlon Brando says, describing his transformative move east in 1943, a high-school dropout training with acting god Stella Adler at the New School, leaving behind the Midwest and the military academy his father forced him to attend.
To hear Brando — Stanley Kowalski of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Terry Malloy of “On the Waterfront,” Vito Corleone of “The Godfather” — recount his own life story, his philosophy, is one of the great thrills of “Listen to Me Marlon.” Directed by Stevan Riley, this revelatory documentary boasts a narration by none other than the film’s subject — culled from more than 200 hours of personal audio recordings that Brando kept in his sprawling compound atop the Hollywood Hills.
If the sorry trajectory of Brando’s last decades — the 1990s and early 2000s, when his son was convicted of manslaughter and his daughter committed suicide, when Brando’s weight ballooned to 300 pounds — have tainted the actor’s legacy, Riley’s film brings the American icon’s career back into sharp focus. To watch Brando in his 20s, brooding and magnetic, screaming “Stella!” at the top of his lungs or murmuring “I coulda been a contender” with all the sadness in the world, is to see one of the greatest film actors ever.
Movie Review
‘Listen to Me Marlon,’ a documentary directed by Stevan Riley. 102 minutes. Not rated. SIFF Film Center.
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Brando talks about his craft. At times, he refers to himself in the third person, in excerpts from a series of “self-hypnosis” tapes (from which the documentary’s title is taken). Trying to work a meditative calm out of the busy rumblings in his head, he whispers, “Marlon, just let go.”
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Not so easy.
“Listen to Me Marlon” is rich with clips of Brando’s work. It’s a kick, too, to see what a cad and a charmer Brando was. Flush with the success of “On the Waterfront” and the Oscar that came with it, Brando hits the road for a press tour, to be interviewed by attractive TV newswomen. He’s incorrigible, turning on the smiles, turning the talk to the way his interviewer lets her hair fall over one eye, how her beautiful mouth turns up at one side.
Shameless, Marlon!
And brilliant.