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Listen To Me Marlon, film review: Brando is engagingly self-deprecating

(15) Stevan Riley, 100 mins

Geoffrey Macnab
Friday 23 October 2015 00:13 BST
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Poignant reflections: Marlon Brando in ‘Listen to Me Marlon’
Poignant reflections: Marlon Brando in ‘Listen to Me Marlon’

Stevan Riley made an excellent documentary about the all-conquering West Indies cricket team of the 1970s (Fire in Babylon) and a very good one about the James Bond films (Everything or Nothing). Now, in this moving and revelatory documentary, he turns his attention to Marlon Brando.

He has access to hours of audio tape, which Brando recorded over the years. This material includes everything from the increasingly obese movie star – late in his career – desperately telling himself to shed the pounds, to lyrical, stream-of-consciousness-like meditations on his Omaha childhood. He reminisces about the sweet smell of liquor on his mother's breath, and gives perceptive reflections on "method" acting as he was taught it by Stella Adler.

Most of Brando's major movies are addressed. We hear him calling Francis Ford Coppola a "c**ksucker" after he felt the director betrayed him on Apocalypse Now. He is fascinating about his experiences filming the ill-fated Mutiny on the Bounty, the movie that introduced him to his beloved Tahiti. Brando has an engagingly self-deprecating way of expressing himself, whether he is talking about being the face of 1950s teen rebellion or about making enough from his movies to "say f**k you to money".Riley makes judicious use of clips from Brando's films, newsreels and interviews he gave over the years. The film features Brando's very poignant reflections on mortality, which we hear as we see the famous scene of Don Corleone's death in The Godfather.

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