Listen to Me Marlon is a fantastic documentary about one of the best actors in the history of film. A treat for every film lover and everyone who enjoy learning and getting to know about genius people who changed and revived things in their field of work and were never afraid to be themselves. The narrator of this film is Marlon Brando himself. The audio material was taken from hundreds of hours of private recordings that he made and were never released to the public before. It was wonderful listening to some of the things he said about acting, life itself, his views on Native and African Americans, film business, success, his troubled youth and many more. I believe thet every person who is thinking of trying to get into acting should see this. Grat film about a great man.

Like The Beatles, Elvis or even the birth of Jesus the constant telling and retelling of the basic known story tends to - initially - put off the would-be consumer to a "new" product. But please don't be. True, Brando's troubled background (both parents being alcoholic) and sudden rise to fame in "Streetcar" (Named Desire) are the stuff of showbiz legend.(To be snobbish to other reviewers I have also read his own autobiography Songs My Mother Taught Me which is required reading if full context and detail is wanted or required. His wives apart.)Yet, despite my doubts, this is an amazing documentary. Indeed it breaks through to another level of understanding and comprehension. Rather like the Watergate Tapes did for our understanding of Nikon.Brando had himself digitised for the video game The Godfather (how they persuaded him to do so is unexplored - money probably) and in this guise he repeatedly speaks his own lines to camera. A device which - like a magician's trick - gets a bit tiresome when over-repeated. The only real fault I can lay at the door of this production apart from the difficulty of actually catching what he said.(Frank Sinatra didn't call him "Mr Mumbles" for nothing.)The central problem with Brando is that he liked to think of himself as an intellectual or even a philosopher, but he simply didn't have the brains for it. Not that he was in any way stupid. Only mediocre. Monty Clift (glimpsed in passing) was a far smarter man and probably a better all-round actor. Shouting and roaring (and doing so as a thick set man) is no real achievement and although he could be subtle he rarely was. Accents weren't his thing either and his appalling British accent on Mutiny of the Bounty showed. Maybe the worst accent this side of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.(Let us throw a complete blanket over his refusal to learn lines later in the his career - although not glossed over in this documentary.)Healthy genes, a wide smile and devil-may-care attitude attracted many women. And some men. But was there anything more than the passing or cheap thrill about the man? No grade A actress ever did more than have a fling with him and his marriage partners remain a mystery. Nothing here gives us a grain of help - although his good words about Tahitians maybe explains one of his later marriage choices. Not that it didn't - again - fail.Accusations of being difficult on set are treated as being misguided, although he undoubtedly was very difficult and on the set of Last Tango and possibly even criminal. You have no right to go beyond to what is agreed in the script or a rehearsal - even if it does create realism.Finally we have to throw in that overused word "complex." But in lifestyle he wasn't a complex man at all. He liked cheap food (and lots of it), wore cheap clothes and preferred the company of cheap women. His relationship with Michael Jackson is unexplored or even mentioned. Maybe he had lost his mind by then?He does make sense when says that you have to be your own psychiatrist and know your own foibles and their possible causes. I knew that without spending a penny though...He was only a dabbler in politics, although the things he supported were ahead of their time. However his greatest art was to be a one-off and an immortal. The recipe for which remains, as yet, unknown. However one of the key ingredients is to be different...

Marlon Brando was one of the cultural icons of the Forties and Fifties, who became more and more of a recluse as he got older. He purchased an island near Tahiti and retired there, making occasional reappearances in movies in return for huge fees. In the end he became fatter and fatter, and when he died at the age of eighty in 2004, he was a mere husk of the superstar who had wowed audiences fifty years previously.LISTEN TO ME MARLON tells his life-story in his own words. Entirely composed of extracts from tape-recordings he made himself and stored in his private collections, it tells the tale of a lonely boy from Omaha with an alcoholic mother and a violent father who learned how to make his way in life through a combination of sheer guile and strength. He made his way into the theater, and was quite literally plucked from obscurity to become one of Broadway's biggest stars, with iconic roles such as Stanley Kowalski in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE.We learn a lot about Brando's meticulous approach to preparation for a role; rather than seeing it as a combination of gestures and vocal tricks, he quite literally inhabited his parts. At his best he exuded a danger that made him at once attractive yet frightening to audiences of stage and screen.Yet beneath that confident exterior lurked a fundamentally insecure person, or so the tapes suggest. Brando's turbulent family upbringing left him with little or no moral pointers to guide him; he had to devise them for himself. Sometimes this need for self- reliance went too far; he became violent, almost obsessive in his behavior, especially towards women. He reveled in his ability to conquer them; we have no indication of a softer side to his nature.And it is this reluctance to reveal much about himself that constitutes the film's principal shortcoming. Although the tapes were never intended for public airing, we get the sense that Brando is still giving a performance; leaving a legacy for posterity that portrays him as a passionate actor concerned to maintain a tough-guy image. Even when we see him breaking down in court at his son's trial, we feel that it is no more than a performance designed to curry favor from the jury.LISTEN TO ME MARLON could have benefited from a more dispassionate directorial perspective - perhaps through inclusion of reminiscences from some his friends, colleagues and family, or through a script that invites us to reflect on what we hear from him.

Truly unique approach to creating a near autobiography on one of the best actors of all time. As other reviewers also highlight, the movie mostly consists of Brando's self audio-tapes that he recorded during his lifetime. This in itself is extremely impactful. He was keeping an audio journal of his life before any thought of the internet and blogging. He had the idea to record key memories, thoughts and self-reflections into audio and committed to it for a lifetime. Imagine. Since they are first hand audio tapes, many times they are extremely revealing of his persona. I didn't know much about Brando prior to this movie, just his major characters. As he so emphasizes too - everybody is an actor - you're always trying to put on a face or another during your interactions with people in society. He brought out the new method based way of acting, and we get a couple of footage of Stella Adler added in about it highlighting Brando's use and impact on the method. The Godfather only holds a few minutes of time out of the entire documentary. Not much mention into that role and how he got into character, etc. That would have been interesting to see and hear, especially following the discussion on his difficulties with Coppola. The key notes from the film are kept around his personal life. Wondering with him, what went wrong that his family and personal life turned out they way they did. What did he do? You live through the impact his father's absence and personality had over his entire life - even his thoughts while his son was going through the trial. A very different and powerful take on the stage idol's personal life tragedy. Well recommended.