Review: My Week With Marilyn

A film dealing with the somewhat tumultuous filming of “The Prince and the Showgirl”, a 1951 pairing of director-star Lord Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and American movie star/sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. The former a classically trained, egotistical figure of British cinema royalty, the latter a ‘Method’-trained, deeply insecure, star of mostly innocuous American musicals and comedies. A witness to this meeting of two opposing movie titans is Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) a young man who wrangled his way into a Third Assistant Director’s gig on the film, and who becomes a close confidante of the troubled Monroe during the course of filming. This causes problems with his relationship with a pretty costumes department girl (Emma Watson), whilst Olivier’s wife Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond) wonders whether or not Monroe is a threat to her marriage. Dougray Scott plays Marilyn’s writer husband Arthur Miller, Zoe Wanamaker is her constant companion and acting consultant Paula Strasberg, and Dame Judi Dench plays actress Sybil Thorndike, who sympathises with the fragile Marilyn. Toby Jones plays a sly press agent in the early scenes (who went on to become the producer of the “Planet of the Apes” series, by the way).

 

Like “Hugo” from the same year, I knew this 2011 Simon Curtis directed, Adrian Hodges scripted film would be one of the best films of the year because the subject matter interested me (despite “The Prince and the Showgirl” being one of the few MM films I’ve not yet seen). It turned out that I liked this one even more than “Hugo”, though that may be because my expectations of “Hugo” were even higher. Yes, this film plays very much like something that could easily appear on BBC instead of the big screen (Director Curtis is a TV veteran in his big screen debut), but so what? There’s really not much to complain about here, aside from Dougray Scott not seeming intellectual enough (or American enough) to play Arthur Miller. That was bizarre casting, and the miscast Julia Ormond looks and sounds nothing like Vivien Leigh, even if the character itself is interesting nonetheless. She looks more like Jean Simmons if you ask me, but I’m not sure who you would cast as Ms. Leigh. Ginnifer Goodwin or Jennifer Morrison, maybe, but that’s all I can come up with at the moment, and neither of those are good enough actresses in my view. Aside from that, this is fascinating, mostly well-acted stuff.

 

The standouts in the cast are (perhaps unsurprisingly) Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, and Dame Judi Dench. Williams is incredible as Marilyn, and in my view, was robbed of the Oscar win. She’s got this weird thing about her where she looks like herself at every moment, but also quite often looks like MM too, even if the voice isn’t quite right (And given MM pretty much played MM once she changed her name, that’s not really a flaw, is it?). Yes, she seems too short and thin, but that’s the difference between women of the 50s and the women of today. And that’s meant as complimentary towards women of the 50s, by the way. Those were real women. If one were to go by body size alone, you would’ve been confined to Christina Hendricks or maybe Scarlett Johansson. The former would’ve been disastrously miscast on looks alone, the latter wouldn’t be much better and isn’t much of an actress, either. Nope, Michelle Williams is quite simply the next best thing to the real Marilyn herself, and it’s not like there are too many actresses willing to pack on the pounds for a role, Charlize Theron excepted. Williams certainly gets some of the patented mannerisms and facial expressions down perfectly (causing one to occasionally do a double-take at the uncanniness), but more importantly, she and writer Hodges (working from the real-life Colin Clark’s published diaries) manage to get her character absolutely spot-on. It’s a very, very good performance and a quite well-drawn character, clearly not an easy one to play, and a character one enters the film with some expectations and pre-conceived notions of. This is by and large the Marilyn that those of us who have read all about her and loved her movies will most identify with. Williams even conveys the sense that MM didn’t quite know just how great she was, and I’ve always sensed that from reading about her, too. When she says to Redmayne’s Clark ‘Don’t forget me’, you believe the real Marilyn would say that, and yet you find such a statement incredulous.

 

Perhaps she’s shown to be a tad less intelligent than the real deal seemed to be (I always thought the ditzy persona was largely an act), but the ginormous insecurity and fragility, the seemingly insurmountable pressure of having to be Marilyn Monroe- it’s all near perfectly captured in my view. Don’t forget, this film only covers one of her films, and as the title suggests, only a very brief timeframe. And yet, on evidence here, MM was bruised, battered, and about ready to crumble already. There was still a few more unhappy years ahead of her, I’m afraid. It’s the best any fan could hope for (except for a film based on my favourite film “The Misfits”!), if perhaps a bit too softened for some of her detractors out there. No one has gotten this close to capturing her essence, her look, and her mannerisms all in one. She’s clearly done her homework, and is certainly better than Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd in “Norma Jean & Marilyn”, that’s for sure. And is it possible to get an absolute handle on the rather elusive Ms. Monroe? How much was a ‘performance’ and how much was the real her? That’s part of the fascination, really. But every now and then, you get a glimpse...just as you got a glimpse in something like “The Misfits”, of the real woman, before her life was tragically cut short. The film definitely gets across the idea that she was still just ever so slightly beyond our reach, beyond our help. This film doesn’t deal with the end of her life, but there’s definitely the sense that people wanted to reach out to her, to save her, and we all know it’s a fruitless exercise.

 

I said earlier that she doesn’t really sound like MM, but I will say this: Michelle Williams does her own singing here and is genuinely impressive, though MM herself was never known for having a great voice (I liked it, though), which might’ve helped Williams. She also looks absolutely luminous. One thing I found odd, though, was that Williams seemed to have a body double at times for brief nude shots, and not only did the body double look just as thin as Williams (which for continuity’s sake I understand), but why would the seemingly happy to disrobe Williams need a double anyway? If I have one issue here (a minor one) it’s that Marilyn doesn’t seem to be in the film quite as much as I would’ve liked. Whether this was out of necessity (i.e. I’m not sure how much of a presence she was in these real-life events), or not, it occasionally comes across as an unintentional parody of the real MM’s tempestuous (or ‘difficult’ if you prefer) nature, making me think that Ms. Williams was taking her performance to ‘method’-like heights and acting like a diva on set and they had to work around her mood swings, ala Ms. Monroe herself. I’m joking, of course, but I do think, the characters played by Ormond, Eddie Redmayne, and Emma Watson take up time that could’ve been afforded to Williams and Kenneth Branagh’s Olivier. But it’s based on fact, so we get what we get. Maybe I’m just being greedy and unreasonable, or maybe I’m right and the film could’ve played with some creative license a tad (Are we assuming Clark’s word as gospel anyway?).

 

Kenneth Branagh’s career has seemingly been modelled on Lord Laurence Olivier, so it’s perfectly apt that he should play the famed stage and screen actor, and it is easily the performance of Branagh’s career in my view. Like Williams, he looks enough like Olivier to convince, and he also captures the voice of the man quite well too. More importantly, he simply plays the man. It’s not a dead-on impersonation, but it’s bloody close, and often bloody hilarious. He’s clearly having a whale of a time playing an actor clearly having a bugger of a time. It’s hilarious how everyone adores Marilyn except him (though he clearly lusts after her, too), and you almost feel sorry for the poor, pompous bastard. Almost. Branagh definitely deserved an Oscar for this, and listen out for what is surely a reference to Olivier’s best film, “The Entertainer” when Branagh as Olivier claims to be ‘dead behind these eyes’. I refuse to believe that line wasn’t an intentional homage.

 

Meanwhile, Dame Judi Dench as is her wont, damn well nearly steals the entire film as the amazingly patient and kind-hearted veteran actress Sybil Thorndike. I don’t know how accurate a portrayal it is (I know the name and have probably seen Ms. Thorndike in something, but can’t really place her at this time), but it’s convincing and memorable. It’s every bit as impressive as her Oscar-winning cameo in “Shakespeare in Love”, maybe more.

 

There’s also good smaller turns by Toby Jones and by Zoe Wanamaker as the intimidating and interfering Paula Strasberg. The latter wasn’t intimidating enough or butch-looking enough for my liking, but is nonetheless 99% on point, and it’s not like I’m an expert on the character anyway. Jones, meanwhile gets one of the film’s funniest lines about making allowances for someone with a great pair of tits and a nice arse. Eddie Redmayne and to a lesser extent Emma Watson are fairly forgettable, the former in an important role. I find Redmayne creepy and unseemly on screen (especially after seeing him get jerked-off by his on-screen mother Julianne Moore in the deeply uncomfortable “Savage Grace”), and felt he was a tad miscast this time out. He does get the film’s truest line, however, about how the film ultimately will not serve either Monroe nor Olivier well in what each other was looking for.

 

Emma Watson has grown up, but not much grown as an actress, though her part is superfluous. She’s easily the weakest of the three “Harry Potter” leads, and I’ve always thought so. Also worth mentioning is the film’s cinematography by Ben Smithard. I don’t know how the man did it, but he comes as close as any modern film I can think of in capturing the Technicolour look for certain scenes. It’s amazing.

 

This is definitely a film for any fan of 1950s cinema to see, and absolutely for Marilyn Monroe fans. It’s one of the year’s best films for sure.

 

Rating: B