Intimate look at Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando. PICTURE / SUPPLIED

Listen To Me Marlon
Monday, November 12, 7pm
Davis Theatre, Whanganui Regional Museum
Stevan Riley • UK • 2015 • 103 mins • Documentary • M offensive language

With never-before-seen photos, audio and film footage, British documentarian Stevan Riley delivers an enthrallingly intimate look at the brilliant, troubled and always charismatic Marlon Brando.

"A tonic for Brando fans due to its delivery of such an unexpectedly fulsome, intimate and fresh portrait of a character more complex than any he ever played." — Hollywood Reporter

Memberships and more info at www.whanganuifilmsociety.org.nz.

REVIEWS
"Marlon Brando reveals himself posthumously as he never publicly did in life in the remarkable documentary Listen to Me Marlon. Making marvellously creative use of a stash of audio recordings the actor privately made, plus a striking amount of unfamiliar and never-before-seen photos and film footage, British documentarian Stevan Riley delivers an enthrallingly intimate look at the brilliant, troubled and always charismatic screen legend ..."
— Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

"Autobiographical in nature, unconventional in structure, this is the story of Marlon Brando not as the world saw him but as he saw himself.
"Written, directed and edited by Stevan Riley, Listen to Me Marlon wouldn't exist if it wasn't for hundreds of hours of audio recordings that the actor made over the course of his lifetime, tapes that have never been heard publicly until now.
"Varying from expansive ruminations on acting and life to thoughts on specific roles and even including attempts at self-hypnosis (one of which gives the film its title), Listen to Me Marlon reveals Brando to be almost painfully sensitive and self-aware, a man with a questioning intelligence who could be piercingly candid about his life and work.
"Added into the mix in addition to a wide selection of clips from more than a dozen of the actor's films, is a carefully curated collage of home movies, newsreels and TV interviews. We get to see colour footage of Brando touching up his own makeup on the set of On the Waterfront and an excruciating 1955 appearance with his father on the Edward R Murrow-hosted Person to Person.
"And because Brando had his face digitised in the 1980s, we get to see a digitised version of the actor reciting the 'sound and fury signifying nothing' soliloquy from Macbeth. 'You watch,' he says impishly to his fellow performers. 'Maybe this is the swan song for all of us.'
"Listen to Me Marlon offers proof, despite occasional outbursts to the contrary, of how much Brando cared about acting, how seriously he took it, how consumed he was by the mechanics of getting it right ..."
— Kenneth Turan,
LA Times

Full Review: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-marlon-review-20150731-story.html