Listen To Me Marlon

Sadness, solitude and a disillusionment with the American film industry: these are the veins that run through Listen To Me Marlon, Stevan Riley’s documentary made just a decade after the actor’s death. Brando’s digitised ghost head dominates the screen, its pixelated blue features materialising from out of the gloom. Book-ended by the shooting at his home on Mullholland Drive, the film’s narration is provided by the 100+ hours of never-before-heard recordings made throughout his career, punctuated with clips from his own oeuvre and chat show appearances; Riley’s real achievement lies in the editing of these semi-confessional self-therapy sessions.

Later in his career Brando became an intensely private man and rarely appeared in public. There’s a very clear divide between the strong-headed roles of the 50s and the domineering figures he played in the 70s; A Streetcar Named Desire was only his second feature yet remains one of his stand-out performances, and his Kurtz in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is frightening, poetic and entirely alien from his earlier roles. Linking many of these characters – like those in On The Waterfront (for which he won his first Oscar), Viva Zapata! and Mutiny On The Bounty – is a kind of social justice, a man who sticks up for his fellow oppressed, a persona which bled through into his own life. Throughout his career he nurtured a yearning for Tahiti, drawn to its innocence and detachment from western society, and a clip from the 1972 Oscars shows his rejection of the Best Actor award for The Godfather due to Hollywood’s depiction of Native Americans.