Review

Review Date: 27-November-11
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

My Week With Marilyn (2011)

Let Martin Scorsese rhapsodize about early cinema in Hugo; my favorite slice of Hollywood history this Thanksgiving comes from Simon Curtis' My Week With Marilyn. Based on the memoirs of Colin Clark, who worked on the set of the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl, the movie features fascinating portrayals of Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier along with their famous spouses and various hangers-on. While it doesn't add to what most people know about these stars, it feels like an exciting peek behind the curtain.

Eddie Redmayne plays the fresh-faced Colin, a blue blood with a jones for cinema who uses connections and determination to land a job at Britain's Pinewood Studios. He is quickly assigned to work with Olivier (a delightfully tart Kenneth Branagh), who is possibly the world's most esteemed actor and a longtime knight of the realm. The assignment is especially plum since the great thespian is directing himself opposite the world's biggest celebrity, Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams). The difference between British stage royalty and Hollywood screen royalty emerges when Marilyn arrives at the airport. A mob of reporters snaps a few hundred pictures and asks about her fledgling marriage to Arthur Miller, who is in tow, as well as her upcoming picture. The difference between the representatives of said royalty emerges during the first day of shooting, when Olivier is appalled by his co-star's fragile ego and unprofessional behavior. Whereas everyone else on the set wants to take care of her, Olivier just wants to strangle her.

The role of Marilyn is a departure for Williams, who has made a name for herself in quieter roles. If she doesn't achieve the legend's on-camera effervescence — and I don't know who could — she does capture the hunger that drove Marilyn both personally and professionally, along with a good part of her mystique. She manages somehow to appear both passive and aggressive, if "aggressive" can apply to manipulation that may be unconscious. (I too am tempted to protect her!) The movie shows how Marilyn wasn't content to be a sex symbol and wanted to be a true artist. It further shows how her deep-seated sense of being unloved was destructive to her and those around her. After Miller returns to the States, ostensibly to visit his children but probably to escape his high-maintenance bride, she turns to the smitten Colin for the attention she needs. (She also leans heavily on narcotics, which her handlers readily supply.) For all her faults, it's easy to understand why he cannot resist her. Although their relationship is brief and mostly chaste, she nearly ruins him for regular mortals like the prop girl played by Emma Watson. As Olivier himself admits when the film has wrapped, Marilyn had something unique that amounted to greatness, and what a shame that no amount of adoration could make her see it.

Copyright © 2011 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.