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Movie Review: My Week with Marilyn

Gregory Fichter

Arriving at England’s Shepperton Studios in the summer of 1956, Marilyn Monroe is at the height of her star power and notorious for her unreliable nature on film sets. She is there to play an unchallenging, bubbly role for the great actor/director Laurence Olivier in his production The Sleeping Prince. Tellingly, the movie will arrive in 1957 as The Prince and the Showgirl in order to play up Marilyn’s presence and the promise of her legendary allure. Michelle Williams takes on the daunting task of embodying a true icon – a woman documented and analyzed from every angle in a deluge of biographies since her death. One of those books is a firsthand anecdote from Colin Clark – third assistant director on The Sleeping Prince – that fondly recalls My Week with Marilyn.

A posh young man from a good family, Clark (played in the film by Eddie Redmayne) finds his way onto the movie set through a willful determination and by gaining favor with Olivier’s wife Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond). Olivier (Kenneth Branagh in comical pancake makeup) is in his waning days as a relevant presence in a film era that saw the emergence of American Method actors Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, and Monroe herself. Yes, Marilyn Monroe. I believe that one of the main points of My Week with Marilyn is that aside from her prescriptions and romantic failures, Monroe was a female pioneer in deploying the intense emotional lessons of the New York school of acting which clashed with the old guard professionalism of Oliver’s generation.

With her bohemian acting coach Paula Strassberg (Zoë Wanamaker) and playwright husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott) in tow, Marilyn brings a foreign brand of neurotic artistry to Oliver’s set, driving him to distraction with her late call times and habitual line flubbing, while ruddy Mr. Clark becomes a confidant and eventually a romantic fling that could very well have been just part of the actresses’ research for a romantic role. Williams perfects certain flirty mannerisms in her portrayal, never quite making us believe that she has the supernatural x-factor that Monroe did. Where the actress does impress is in her “off” moments when Norma Jean is allowed to shine through.

Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn.
Photo by LAURENCE CENDROWICZ – © 2011 THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY.

Though Monroe is recalled as a fragile, tragic figure, My Week with Marilyn is polite about dwelling on her darker side. The film is a surprisingly light trifle for the most part – Judi Dench makes her requisite British film appearance offering sage advice and cuttingly humorous remarks as Dame Sybil Thorndike, Branagh mugs and preens in an overwrought caricature of the distinguished Olivier, and Emma Watson is underused in a throwaway romantic subplot with Colin. Plenty of small moments of grace and levity make the film enjoyable, but director Simon Curtis’s background in television is evident in the shorthand storytelling and lack of cinematic scope – it ultimately feels like a TV movie with a stronger pedigree of acting talent and a showy central role for Michelle Williams.

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Gregory Fichter

Greg toiled for years in the hallowed bowels of the legendary Thomas Video and has studied cinema as part of the Concentration for Film Studies and Aesthetics at Oakland University. He has hosted the cult movie night "Celluloid Sundays" at The Belmont in Hamtramck, MI. and enjoys everything from High Trash to Low Art.

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