Brando With A Glass Eye

Entering the first scene with a fake gun in hand, protagonist Luca (Yiannis Niarros) tells the audience, "This is just an acting exercise." This explanation seems to apply to the entirety of Antonis Tsonis's feature debut, which consists of uneven scenes with a burdensome amount of exaggerated acting. What starts as an ambitious exploration of obsession and guilt gradually becomes a spectacle that feels too extravagant for its own good.

Luca is an ambitious method actor from Athens. He lives with Alekos (Kostas Nikouli), his brother, who is irritated by his obsessive approach to theatre. Wanting to follow in the footsteps of his heroes, Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, the protagonist often ignores his immediate surroundings to practice accents and character ideas. In the background, tapes of acting teacher Stella Adler egg him on with orders and parables. He comprehends and embraces the sacrifices method actors must make, even willing to abandon a play directed by his friend Melina (Chara Mata Giannatou).

Both brothers are mourning the loss of their mother, but the protagonist uses his familial trauma to delve even deeper into his art, clashing with his brother over her memory. Wanting to move on, Alekos plans a heist and lures Luca into it, after discovering he needs the money for a New York audition.

Once the heist fails, Luca spirals down a path of guilt, embodying a series of characters that shift between fiction and reality. Attempting to redeem himself, he befriends Ilias (Alexandros Chrysanthopoulos), a young man who was accidentally shot during the robbery. On paper, their relationship works as the main tension point, but it often gets interrupted by the director's inclination for outlandish antics.

Brando With A Glass Eye is a mishmash of genres, visuals and sensibilities. No one element brings it together. Not even Niarros, who gives a tireless performance. Luca simply has an unlikable quality to him that affects the rapport of the viewer with the overall narrative. That's not to say he is an unredeemable character. His playfulness can be absorbing, especially when he teaches Illias the basics of acting.

Luca's journey is decorated by an experimental style that blends thriller with psychedelic visuals. The quirky imagery mirrors the protagonist's unsettled psyche and captures the viewer’s attention. Alexandros Livitsanos's intense score heightens the weight of Luca's predicament, who narrowly slips through the fingers of the police while befriending the unintended victim. But there's a roughness to the editing which creates gaps between scenes. The impression of disparate sketches is palpable, placing the spotlight on Luca’s various personas and disregarding the viewers’s connection to other characters.

Although Brando With A Glass Eye boldly delves into the complex intricacies of method acting, it lacks an engaging style that hooks the audience throughout. The intended depth of an arc focused on losing yourself within your art becomes lost in an excessive appetite for theatrics. While Luca's story has all the conceivable elements to examine method acting through a nuanced lens, its execution exhibits the rationale of a parody, inadvertently caricaturing its own protagonist and his craft.