DON JUAN DEMARCO
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
DON JUAN DEMARCO Starring: Marlon Brando, Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway. Screenplay/Director: Jeremy Leven.
Once upon a time, Marlon Brando was considered by many to be the best American actor in film. It is difficult to keep that in mind sometimes, since so many off-screen issues have turned him into something of an eccentric joke: his infamous rejection of the 1972 Best Actor Oscar via Sacheen Littlefeather; the massive weight gain; his stream-of-consciousness turn in APOCALYPSE NOW; most recently, his televised smooch-fest with Larry King. Brando has been on the big screen only a handful of times in the last twenty years, so the myth has transcended the actor. That is a shame, because not only can the man still act, he has shown a great sense of humor about himself. Exhibit A: his hilarious self-parody in 1990's THE FRESHMAN. Exhibit B: DON JUAN DE MARCO, a wonderful romantic comedy in which the unlikely pairing of Brando and Johnny Depp adds up to an enchanting fantasy.
Brando plays Jack Mickler, a psychiatrist at a New York mental hospital who is just a few days shy of retirement when he comes upon a most intriguing case. That case is a young man (Johnny Depp) who claims he wants to die--and who also claims that he is Don Juan de Marco, the world's greatest lover. Mickler is intrigued by the young man, and asks to treat him until his committal hearing. Over the next several days, Don Juan tells Mickler his life story, a fanciful tale full of love, adventure, tragedy and exotic locations. Although Mickler questions the veracity of the stories, he finds himself drawn into them, and inspired to re-discover the romance in his 30 year marriage to wife Marilyn (Faye Dunaway), and in all aspects of his life.
DON JUAN DE MARCO is the kind of story which has been done many times before--the benevolent eccentric who teaches a lesson to unhappy realists--but Jeremy Leven works wonders with it wearing both of his hats. As writer, he has crafted a screenplay full of instantly quotable lines. When Don Juan describes telling his true love about his 1,500 previous lovers, he explains, "I could see that the number was substantially more than she was expecting." The opening sequence, in which Don Juan seduces a woman in a restaurant, is also a highlight, full of big laughs. But as clever a script as he has at his disposal, it is one of Leven's choices as a director which makes it something special. While the narrated flashbacks of Don Juan's life are given a surreal tinge both by the nature of the subjects and Don Juan's florid description, the scenes involving interactions between other characters are almost hyper-real. The dialogue is simple, with lines frequently overlapping, and the camera is usually stationary. DON JUAN DE MARCO is most about the beauty of a romantic life, and the manner in which Leven juxtaposes Don Juan's world with the "real" world is ideal.
Leven also coaxes two superb performances out of his lead actors. Brando is effortless as the run-down Mickler, whose early connection to Don Juan in the persona of Don Octavio belies his latent romanticism. He is marvelously tender in his scenes with Dunaway, and a riot when he takes a shot at his own girth in a scene working out with a home exercise unit. It is a light and very funny performance, matched and perhaps surpassed by Johnny Depp. Don Juan is in the mold of the romantic dreamers Depp has played in films like BENNY & JOON and ED WOOD, but with a sexual dimension he hasn't showed previously. Much of DON JUAN DE MARCO depends on Depp selling his conviction that the stories he narrates are true, and his passionate delivery makes it work.
He works so well, in fact, that several scenes between Brando and Dunaway probably ended up on the cutting room floor to allow Depp's character more screen time. That's something of a shame, because the film is really about how Mickler changes, and how those changes re-energize his marriage, and Dunaway is too good to be so under-used. However, it is quibbling to fault DON JUAN DE MARCO for what isn't on the screen, when what is on the screen is so appealing. Sweet, funny and unapologetically upbeat, DON JUAN DE MARCO is a perfect breezy spring entertainment.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 romantic conquests: 8.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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