Tribeca Movie Review: Brando
The following movie was screened at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
Brando
Special Event, Documentary
2007, U.S.A.
Dir: Leslie Greif, Mimi Friedman
It’s hard to believe that a man who established such a resonant and respected legacy within the world of film has been gone for three years already. Marlon Brando was the benchmark for acting in his lifetime. There was acting before Brando and there was acting after Brando. His influence can be seen in the actors considered to be his peers, spanning all the way to the actors getting work today. No one is safe from Brando’s awesome dominion.
This epic documentary pays homage to the life of a man recognized the world over for his impressive and diverse amount of characters portrayed. In typical bio-doc fashion, the film traces Brando’s timeline, beginning with his inception in Nebraska, through his years as a stunning young stage actor, to revered veteran actor, to family man, and in the end, worn down human being. In almost three hours, we get to see and know everything we ever wanted to about Brando, including his screen test for Rebel Without A Cause.
An extremely personal man who hated acting and regarded it as merely an unimportant task, Brando lived his life according to his own rules and mantras. He did what he wanted and how he wanted, and flushed out all his emotions onto the screen in his breathtaking performances. Having worked with some of the most important filmmakers of his time, such as Elia Kazan, Francis Ford Coppola, and Bernardo Bertolucci, Brando produced a monumental amount of work that is considered an important addition to the library of classic cinema. He will go down as one of the greatest actors in the annals of film history.
A wide variety of interviews with close friends, fellow actors, producers, and actors who looked up to him, the film bears down upon the viewer in recounting the life of a genius. At times longwinded and drawn out, the film seems interminable at times, but all for the glory of Brando. We see how his career flourished in the 1950’s, gaining him an Oscar for his performance in On the Waterfront, and then see how he decided to take more unconventional roles in the 60’s, almost single-handedly ruining his career.
And then the rebirth of Brando in the 70’s appears, as he gets picked for the role of a lifetime as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather. A time of important films for Brando, the 70’s gave him back the reputation he was known all along for.
Despite the intrusive length, the film paints a vivid picture of one of the greats. A man who truly was the sign of greatness, Brando will always go down in history for his accomplishments, and this film can only help in cementing his legacy in the minds of filmgoers all over.
Eva Green Biography
Eva Green (born July 5, 1980 in Paris) is a French actress and composer.
Green is the daughter of French actress Marlène Jobert and Walter Green, a Swedish dentist. She has one sibling, a fraternal twin (non-identical) sister, Joy. Eva studied in Paris and London and performed on stage before making her film debut as the female lead in the Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 NC-17-rated film The Dreamers with Michael Pitt and Louis Garrel. In addition to her acting, Green composed original music for the film. The Dreamers brought her some notoriety for her explicit, extensive full frontal nudity. While filming Dreamers, Green was said to have found Bertolucci manipulative, though in a creative way that wasn’t pushy. In comparison to her previous stage acting, she has said that acting in front of the camera makes you its “plaything.”
Described by Bertolucci as “so beautiful it’s indecent”, her performance brought her critical acclaim. In 2004 she co-starred alongside of Romain Duris and Kristin Scott Thomas in Arsène Lupin, directed by Jean-Paul Salomé. In 2005 she starred in her first Hollywood blockbuster as Sibylla of Jerusalem in the film Kingdom of Heaven with Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson and directed by Ridley Scott. She has recently been cast as Bond girl Vesper Lynd in the upcoming James Bond film Casino Royale with new 007 actor Daniel Craig. Casino Royale will be released in theaters worldwide on November 17, 2006.
Green has been in a relationship with Yann Claasen since the late-1990s. The multi-lingual Green’s name in Swedish is pronounced “grain” and comes from the Swedish word gren, which means (tree) branch.
Bai Ling Biography
Bai Ling means “white spirit” in her Chinese dialect and she has become a rising actress on both sides of the Pacific. The delicate, almost ethereal actress was particularly memorable to USA audiences as Myca, the drug-pushing cannibal with a taste for eyeballs, in Alex Proyas’ thriller “The Crow” (1994) and as the President’s Chinese interpreter in Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” (1995). The latter role was almost ironic as Bai Ling had arrived in the USA just four years earlier not knowing one word of English.
Raised in a typical Chinese family, one accepting of the revolution, Bai Ling was a musical performer at age 14, inducted into the army and sent to Tibet to entertain the troops. In 1986, she also made her film debut in “Haitan” and subsequently appeared in films made in China. Worldwide audiences could catch a glimpse of her in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Little Buddha” (1993), but it was her subsequent efforts in “Dead Funny” (1995) and her delightful turn as an Americanized immigrant in “Somewhere in the City” (1996) that brought her attention. Bai Ling made headlines when she landed the leading role opposite Richard Gere in the political thriller “Red Corner” (1997).
Her TV work has included “Nobody’s Girls” (PBS, 1994) a documentary with recreations in which Bai Ling was Mary Bong, a 15-year old Chinese woman who became famous as a midwife after she settled in Alaska. She made her American TV-movie debut in “Dead Weekend” (Showtime, 1995).
- Born:
on 10/10/70 in China - Job Titles:
Actor
Family
- Father: Bai Yu-xiang.
- Grandmother: Peng Zhi-jia.
- Mother: Chen Bin-bin.
- Sister: Bai Je.
Significant Others
- Companion: Chris Isaak. reportedly dating from late 1999
Education
- New York University, New York, New York
Milestones
- 1986 Entertained soldiers in Tibet (date approximate)
- 1986 Made film debut in “Haitan”
- 1990 Moved to USA (date approximate)
- 1993 Had cameo role in “Little Buddha”
- 1994 Made American TV debut in “Nobody’s Girls”
- 1994 Made American film debut with “The Crow”
- 1995 Made American TV movie debut in “Dead Weekend” (Showtime)
- 1995 Played interpreter in “Nixon”
- 1997 Snagged role of leading lady opposite Richard Gere in “Red Corner”
- 1999 Cast as Tuptim in the remake, “Anna and the King”
- 1999 Was virtually wasted in a stereotypical role of an Asian vamp in “Wild Wild West”
- 2001 Acted in “The Breed”, a vampire thriller, aired on Starz! in lieu of theatrical release
- 2001 Had featured role in the NBC miniseries “The Monkey King”
- 2003 Was one of the titular “Extreme Team” (lensed 2001), an ABC TV-movie that also served as a pilot for a potential series
- 2004 Appeared in Spike Lee’s comedy “She Hate Me”
- 2004 Featured in the comedy “My Baby’s Daddy”
- 2004 Played the Mysterious Woman in “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” starring Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow
- Will co-star with Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Cheri Oteri in Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales” (lensed 2005)