FILM REVIEW: LISTEN TO ME MARLON

Marlon Brando in Listen to Me Marlon.

Legendary

By Ed Rampell

Marlon Brando may have died in 2004 but he has not gone gently into Dylan Thomas’ good night. He’s back!

In the interests of full disclosure your humble scribe should let you know that Brando is his favorite actor. Having said that, Stevan Riley’s great new documentary, Listen to Me Marlon, about the stage and screen legend, is a must-see for viewers interested in film/theater history, the art of acting, celebrity activism and, of course Brando, the man and artist.

Riley had access to a hitherto previously unknown, privately held treasure trove of audiotapes the prolific Brando (an avid ham radio operator, By the way) accumulated over the years for various purposes, including: To prepare and research roles; self-hypnosis; recitations of Shakespeare monologues; etc. These wide-ranging ruminations reflect on: Growing up miserable in Nebraska, the son of alcoholics; Method Acting; Brando’s family; many of his movies; his romantic life; and this activist’s radical politics.

Riley’s documentary explores and expresses the actor’s inner and outer life through the audiotapes, spoken by Brando himself with that distinctive voice -- in effect Brando is posthumously narrating the film, literally having the last word. Of course, there are extensive still photos and clips -- not only from Marlon’s movies, but also of his Stanislavsky Method guru, Stella Adler. Some of those who worked with Brando, such as Bernardo Bertolucci, who directed 1973’s Last Tango in Paris, are also heard.

In archival and news footage we see Brando’s battles in court -- briefly with his ex-wife, Anna Kashfi and their custody clash over their son, Christian Brando and then, unfolding like a Shakespearean tragedy, what Brando called “the messenger of misery” arriving at his home: Christian’s shooting of his Tahitian half-sister Cheyenne’s Polynesian lover, Dag Drollet, at Marlon’s Mulholland Drive perch.

There are also home movies of Brando in happier days at Tahiti and Tetiaroa, the nearby atoll he bought as the reclusive star’s private getaway. Although the documentary, which is generally sympathetic to its subject (perhaps a condition of having access to the tapes and for making the film?), doesn’t go into it, the killing of Dag apparently prevented Brando for the last 15 years or so of his life from returning to French Polynesia, where he would have been under French jurisdiction and subject to questioning. By building a resort at Tetiaroa the oft-contradictory celebrity brought tourists to his supposed refuge. And Brando’s eco-obsession to transform Tetiaroa into an environmental paragon failed, marring the previously pristine paradise with abandoned rotting structures. (I know, I saw them there in the 1990s.)

Among the most absorbing of Marlon’s musings are his political views. The documenatry shows this son of alcoholics and an abusive father developed an inherent sense of identification with outsiders and the man who would play a Mafia chieftain in 1972’s The Godfather maintains he couldn’t stand to see the weak get pushed around. To his credit, in his finest moments Brando used his fame and fortune to support and shine a light on the oppressed. In Listen to Me Marlonthe actor and activist is seen in clips at civil rights events and at the funeral of “Little Bobby Hutton”, the teenaged Black Panther killed by Oakland police in a shootout which involved Eldridge Cleaver. Brando is shown standing beside Panther co-founder and chairman Bobby Seale. Martin Luther King also appears in a different clip.

Brando is better known for his stance on Native American issues, although he once rather pithily pointed out that when it comes to who’s more oppressed -- blacks, Indians, etc. - “it’s not an ouch contest.” Brando is heard recounting putting himself “on the line” during an armed land struggle at Kenosha, Wisconsin, pitting Natives against National Guardsmen, discussing being “four feet from death” as bullets whistled near him.

Of course, in what is arguably the Academy Awards ceremony’s greatest political moment, Brando sent traditionally-garbed Sacheen Little Feather to decline his Godfather Oscar, due to Hollywood’s disparaging treatment of America’s aboriginal people with decades of celluloid stereotypes. Part of this unforgettable moment, which raised the spirits of indigenous occupiers at Wounded Knee and finally gave some airtime to Native Americans, is in Listen to Me Marlon.

Intercut with clips from movies such as John Ford’s 1939 Drums Along the Mohawk, Listen to Me Marlon includes a bearded Brando denouncing Tinseltown’s depiction of Natives as “savages” during a 1970s appearance on Dick Cavett’s ABC-TV talk show, proclaiming: “Everything we are taught about the American Indian [by Hollywood] is wrong. There have been 400 treaties written by the United States, in good faith with the Indians, and every single one of them has been broken. We like to see ourselves as perhaps John Wayne sees us, that we are a country that stands for freedom, for rightness, for justice. It just simply doesn’t apply. And we were the most rapacious, aggressive, destructive, torturing, monstrous people who swept from one coast to the other, murdering and causing mayhem among the Indians.”

Listen to Me Marlon is a stellar, riveting biography. Riley previously directed the first cinema documentary on James Bond and the most lucrative film franchise ever, 2012’s Everything or Nothing, which Passion Pictures also co-produced. But what Brando aficionados may most appreciate is Marlon’s mulling over of acting and his stage and screen career. It’s fascinating to hear Brando reveal what he thought in order to unleash his pent-up explosive rage in A Streetcar Named Desire, which catapulted him to fame on Broadway and then Hollywood. It is an illuminating example of how the Stanislavsky Method works.