8/10
The vast majority of film characters who are addicted to
pills and alcohol should not be the main characters in movie scripts. These characters are frequently one
dimensional and are only required to slur words, stumble over steps, and make a
nuisance of themselves. There are
exceptions (Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas) as there are to
any rule of thumb, but usually one does not want to rest a movie on a pill-head’s
shoulders.
My Week with Marilyn does not rely on Marilyn Monroe (Michelle
Williams) as the central character, but she is not just a supporting role
either. The star of the movie with ‘Marilyn’
in the title is actually Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), the young third
assistant director on Sir Laurence Olivier’s production of The Prince and the Showgirl. Through amusing perseverance, Colin has
wormed his way into his first real job and onto his first real movie set. He fetches coffee, shuffles script copies,
and routinely asks the talent what he can do to make them more comfortable.
The script chose to follow Colin’s one week on the set with
Marilyn Monroe and their brief flirtation/affair which itself is memorialized in
his autobiography devoted to that week.
However, through a few factors which may not be apparent from the script’s
pages, neither Colin nor Marilyn is the most interesting character in the
movie. This credit belongs solely to Sir
Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh). It
is 1956 and Olivier confides to Colin that he no longer feels young and decided
to cast Marilyn in his film to recapture some of his lost youth and maybe even
engage in his own affair with her.
Olivier and Branagh have a lot in common. They are Shakespeare addicts, are widely
acknowledged to be seminal actors in their respective generations, and I like
to think that if their births were reversed, it would be Olivier playing
Branagh in a film. Branagh gives a truly
convincing performance as an aging Olivier who begins amused with Marilyn’s
quirks before settling with disgust at her pathetic work ethic and ridiculous
attempt to define herself as a true acting talent.
On set, Marilyn was never on time, held up the rest of the
cast for hours, was spoon fed her lines and delivery method from her acting
coach Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wanamaker), and sometimes stayed in bed for an
entire day because of her pill and alcohol problems. The film blames these problems both on Paula
and Marilyn’s agent Milton Greene (Dominic Cooper) as her sycophantic
pill-pushers. Colin brushes aside his
own worries about Marilyn’s physical and mental health because he has severe
love blinders on. When a person is so
smitten and in lust as Colin is, the object of their desire can do no wrong.
Aside from Michelle Williams, the supporting cast is quite
strong. Co-starring with Marilyn is Dame
Sybil Thorndike (Dame Judi Dench) who appears just as smitten as Colin
sometimes and Olivier’s wife Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond) gives a brief but
telling performance. Dominic Cooper
plays a standard high-tension agent protective of his star and makes me
question why he still shows up in such minor roles after his fantastic turn as
Uday Hussein in this year’s The Devil’s Double.
Most of the critical response to My Week with Marilyn
focuses on Michelle Williams and fawns about her most certain Oscar
nomination. I disagree. Williams looks nothing like Monroe and I was
painfully aware of the fake blonde wig and fake teeth. For most of the movie, and especially in the
first half, I was watching Michelle Williams play Marilyn Monroe instead of
forgetting that and just watching Marilyn.
Director Simon Curtis made a mistake in casting a well known actress to
play Marilyn; he would have been much better off casting an unknown actress
which would have decreased the inevitable distraction.
I encourage you to take the time to see My Week with Marilyn for
the critically overlooked Branagh performance as Olivier and an overall enjoyable
movie. Try and look past the Williams
performance and enjoy a 1950’s English period piece.
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