My Week With Marilyn

My Week With Marilyn hinges on the performance by Michelle Williams playing Marilyn Monroe, which at times is good and other times a bit act-y. The film is based on a 1995 book written by the other central character, Colin Clark, at the time a young gofer with the inflated title of Third Assistant Director. Colin muscles his way into working on Laurence Olivier's film production, even though he has no experience.


As expected when Monroe arrives in England to film The Prince and the Showgirl (then called The Sleeping Prince), there is a lot of hooha about her presence.  At first Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) plays along with the publicity but once filming begins he knows Monroe's reputation and work ethic are going to be hard to ovecome, which is the case.  In his role as director he becomes impatient with her absences and her unpreparedness, but offers little to help her out, just berating her time and again.

Colin (Eddie Redmayne) is shown to be a naive stars-in-his-eyes kind of guy with a puppy dog crush on Marilyn, that also manifests, naturally, as sexual attraction (even though he professes true love and to run away with her and protect her and all that teenager kind of stuff).  I thought he was just a bit too naively portrayed, at 23, even if he lived in a sheltered country manor

I think most competent actresses can play the sad/dramatic part of MM but it is harder to do the sexy convincingly, which I don't think MW quite captures. She does not capture the physicality of her either. At the beginning and end of the film there are clips of her performing in a movie and at a sort of night club, and it is obvious to me that they padded her hips, but the rest of MW is still pretty slim and she needs a bullet bra to enhance her shape.

Judi Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike, who costarred in The Prince, was very sweet to Marilyn, seeing her nervousness and playing it off as she herself (Sybil) was an old woman who needed more rehearsal and asked Marilyn to help read lines with her, and scolding Olivier for being mean to her; I liked this portayal.  Zoe Wanamaker, as Paula Strasberg (famous acting teacher Lee Strasberg's wife) was Marilyn's main handler and acting coach whom Olivier hated to have on set; I got a lesbian vibe off her, as well as a stage mother, overly protective type. Dominic Cooper played Milton Greene, Marilyn's other handler, the resentful "old boy" where Colin was the "new boy."  Philip Jackson played a detective hired to drive her around and keep tabs (report back/spy) on her, a good portrayal. 

Other supporting actors included Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh (Olivier's aging wife at the time), Michael Kitchen as Olivier's film production company manager, Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller, hidden behind his glasses, and Toby Jones as Marilyn's American manager.

Overall the film was fine, just not great. It wasn't revealing anything new about Marilyn, just reinforcing what we already knew to be an insecure and emotionally isolated woman.  Michelle Williams' portrayal was good but I think it is very, very hard to capture Marilyn's mystique.  She did a good job with the sad and dramatic elements of her personality, but for me was hit-or-miss with her mannerisms that everyone has seen and judges her on.