A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 21 January 2017.
IMAGINE… LISTEN TO ME
MARLON: Saturday,
BBC Two
SOUND OF MUSICALS WITH
NEIL BRAND: Friday,
BBC Four
An
extraordinary tribute to an extraordinary man, the award-winning documentary LISTEN TO ME MARLON was/is that rarest
of beasts – a profile of an artist that matched the depths and complexity of
the subject in question.
Shown
as part of the Imagine strand (the
dreaded Alan Yentob’s introduction was mercifully brief), this mesmerising film
revolved around judiciously edited highlights from hundreds of hours of Marlon
Brando’s self-recorded ruminations on the meaning of life and art.
Most
self-analytical actors could bore you to tears with such lofty subject matter,
but Brando wasn’t most self-analytical actors.
As
these tapes confirmed, he was an intensely thoughtful, sensitive, eloquent man
who never considered himself any greater or more important than anyone else. On
the contrary, he spent most of his adult life in a state of almost self-disgusted
ambivalence when it came to his craft.
Brando,
quite rightly, will always be regarded as one of the greatest actors who ever
lived, but acting often struck him as an absurd way to make a (very lucrative)
living. And yet he was evidently fascinated by its - and by extension, human
nature’s – muddled contradictions.
Unlike
most documentary tributes to great artistes, this film, by director Stevan
Riley, actually tapped into the psychological essence of its subject.
Having
Brando as a narrator helped immeasurably, of course, but Riley obviously came
to understand this eccentric soul after spending so much time in his head
(literally represented at points by an eerie computer-generated simulation).
A
portrait emerged of a man whose sensitivity was forged from a childhood raised
by an alcoholic mother whom he adored, and a tough, violent, emotionally
distant father.
Brando
craved love and appreciation, hence why he became an actor, but movie stardom
and critical plaudits eventually revealed themselves to be just another illusory facet
of a hypocritical, unjust society. He was in essence a good, if troubled, man.
But
let’s not get carried away. Despite being produced with the blessing of
Brando’s estate, Riley’s film, for all its compassion for the man, wasn’t a blanket
hagiography.
It
didn’t ignore his notoriously fractious relationship with directors whose work
didn’t compliment his often stubbornly wayward vision of how a part should be
played. He was a right pain in the arse, sometimes for the sheer hell of it.
His
later performances could be embarrassingly lazy – he wore an earpiece feeding
him lines - which no amount of disillusionment with acting can excuse. The last
half of his career sometimes felt like a cynical, cash-grabbing joke at the
world’s expense.
A
lifelong supporter of the underdog, Brando may have used his embarrassing
celebrity status to raise awareness of social injustice, but he also exploited
it in pursuit of women. One of his choice quotes from the film, typical in its sly
erudition, was: “I was known and destined to spread my seed far and wide.”
Then
again, what woman or man could resist the young, beautiful Brando in his
charismatic pomp? Much like the similarly carnal yet self-mocking Elvis
Presley, there was – at the risk of soliciting hyperbole - something almost
Godlike about Brando. And yet Brando, like Elvis, always wrestled with nagging
guilt: why am I the chosen one?
Riley’s
haunting film humanised this tarnished deity to quite stunning effect.
In
the latest episode of SOUND OF MUSICALS
WITH NEIL BRAND, the estimable music historian traced, with characteristic
acuity, the maturation of stage musicals during the late 1950s and 1960s.
This
was an era when Jewish artisans such as Lionel Bart and Leonard Bernstein
began, via classics such as Oliver!
and West Side Story, to tackle deeper
themes of social inequality and racial identity.
In
many ways the essence of BBC Four, Brand’s illuminating lectures – with their
avuncular yet authoritative tone – are a delight. Whenever Earth’s biggest
bores start grousing about the licence fee, this is the sort of programme I
nominate in its defence.
Never
underestimate the value of a modest, impassioned expert.
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