Review of Listen to Me Marlon (2015) by Steve C — 31 Dec 2016

I wanted to like this more than I did.

It had a great concept: There are all these audio tapes Brando made over the years and now we get to hear them in this movie. Well I wish that there was a way we could just hear the talking on the tapes without the movie and certainly without the awful scoring of the movie where there is this repetitious music going on underneath and distracting front the talking. Plus it was all cut up too much I would have rather heard Brando manander than the editing. Anyway, this wasn't as good as I had hoped.

Since they both had life long getting down to showbiz weight issues and got very fat in the end I kind of link Brando and Welles.

Once again. like Welles, the other great movie fatman, Brando hit young and very big. But Brando had such a conflicted attitude about the whole thing. I mean I certainly understand his stance about how movie acting is made into a much bigger thing than it ought to be but on the other hand if you are lucky enough to wander into the very top of whatever a stupid culture, like ours, has to offer, you might as well find a way to enjoy it. I guess he did in his way with lots of girlfriends but then that lead to horrible trouble later on with the whole Christian and Cheyenne stuff. And the movie hits on that stuff a little which kind of surprised me and I don't think this is a movie Marlon would sign off on at all. Anyway, I would rather read about him than see movies like this.

And besides those two were a lot different, Welles being the more fortunate and more accomplished with much more to say really. Marlon had move missteps on other people's projects and just used his movies to pay off wives and children, way way too many children, and the crazy owning the island concept then ended up nowhere. A lot of money probably went in the left causes too. Indians, etc and that is good. Anyway, he had a terrible life and I'm so glad I'm not him.