In a way, “Listen to Me Marlon” is an autobiographical documentary. Director Stevan Riley has combined years of actor Marlon Brando’s personal audio recordings with a wealth of footage to create a self-narrated portrait of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated actors.
Thanks to the candid quality of those recordings and some excellent production from Riley, “Listen to Me Marlon” is a powerful and insightful experience.
In one of the first recordings Riley shares, Brando describes a procedure where his different expressions were scanned into a computer in order to create a three-dimensional rendering of his image. Throughout the film, Riley uses this animated character to mouth the words on Brando’s recordings, giving “Listen to Me Marlon” a surreal, beyond-the-grave quality.
The documentary follows a simple chronological path, picking things up after Brando’s childhood when he moved to New York City. There he fell under the tutelage of Stella Adler, an actress who pioneered the technique of method acting.
Brando was shy but responded to the idea of using the memories of a troubled childhood to channel the emotions he needed on stage.
From there, the film covers Brando’s breakthrough as Stanley in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and the transition into a movie career that netted him his first Best Actor Oscar for “On the Waterfront” in 1954. Highlights and lowlights follow, all punctuated by Brando’s own insightful commentary.
Over the course of an hour and a half, a theme or two emerges. Brando is happy to enjoy some of the fruits of fame — namely women. But his natural shyness winces under the cultural spotlight, and he becomes increasingly alienated and withdrawn over time, until tragedies involving his children draw him back into the public eye.
This alienation ties into Brando’s lifelong affection for Tahiti. As a young man in military school, Brando would read National Geographic articles about the exotic island and daydream about escaping there. He finally visited Tahiti while filming “Mutiny on the Bounty,” and eventually has a daughter, Cheyenne, of Tahitian descent.
“Listen to Me Marlon” is very thorough, and Brando’s recordings are plain and candid, partially because many of the tapes were made as he was trying to conduct a kind of self-hypnosis style of therapy.
It’s fascinating to hear the actor’s perspective on his well-known experiences, especially when, as in the case of “Apocalypse Now,” his story is starkly different from his director’s. (Francis Ford Coppola has gone on record insisting that Brando’s awful condition on set led to a number of creative compromises and production delays, but Brando disagrees.)
Brando’s perspective on the nature of his career is informative, if cynical. At one point he insists that if he hadn’t become an actor, he would have become a con man, since the two professions are so similar. On a more enlightening note, he observes that the quality of his performance on screen is a reflection of his audience, who essentially does his job for him by projecting them into their own experience.
It’s a valuable and unique piece for anyone who is a fan of the actor’s films, or a student of acting itself. And you may find yourself wishing other historical figures had made similar recordings.
“Listen to Me Marlon” is not rated, but pushes into R-rated territory with some periodic profanity and vulgar language, as well as a few violent images from some of Brando’s films (such as “The Godfather”).
Joshua Terry is a freelance writer and photojournalist who appears weekly on "The KJZZ Movie Show" and also teaches English composition for Salt Lake Community College. Find him online at facebook.com/joshterryreviews.