Let me start out with the most salient observation: Michelle Williams just nails her role as Marilyn Monroe. I don’t mean that she looks just like her – she doesn’t, although the makeup department does a hell of a job engineering a pretty good facsimile. But watching Williams here, you forget you’re not watching the real Marilyn. Her Monroe is sexy, of course, and also seductive, flirtatious, magnetic, glamorous and manipulative. At the same time, she is needy, insecure, petulant, childish.
Marilyn Monroe is the most iconic of movie stars. From about 1953 until her death, she was MM, the “blonde bombshell”, a unique combination of sex and innocence, of bimbo and girl next door. She was everyman’s fantasy girl. She was Hugh Hefner’s first ever centerfold. She parlayed this image into fame and fortune, but not happiness. Her shocking death by apparent suicide in 1962 enhanced her mythic status, while at the same time, sparked an industry of revelation about her life and her liaisons, and a lot of soul searching about her complicated personality, the meaning of her death, America’s contradictory attitudes and expectations about women, and so forth. Williams’ accomplishment in My Week With Marilyn is how she transforms the icon into a virtual flesh and blood human creature, an amalgam of the mythic star and the frightened Norma Jean. This feat alone is a strong recommendation to see this picture.
There is a small sub-genre of the “coming of age” picture that examines a young person’s first scary or daunting, yet life-changing experience in the entertainment industry - typically involving a confrontation with a powerful, larger-than-life figure: an actor (e.g. the fictional Alan Swann, played by the legendary Peter O’Toole in My Favorite Year (1982)), or a director (e.g. Orson Welles, magnificently portrayed by Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles (2008)), or a rock star, painter, etc. The events unfold through the eyes and feelings of the young protagonist; invariably there’s a subsidiary romantic angle also, but the main event is the angsty relationship between the kid and the celebrity.
My Week With Marilyn, based on a true story by Colin Clark, falls into this category, although there are a couple of twists to the formula: First, Colin (Eddie Redmayne), our young protagonist, pairs up with not one, but two iconic superstars: the brilliant, lionized actor/director Sir Lawrence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Marilyn Monroe. Second, the love story, i.e. Colin’s growing infatuation with the superstar Monroe, is not only a love story, of sorts, but it is also the central event that provides a life lesson to the young man and is, of course, the primary focus of the movie.
It is 1957. Colin, through comical perseverance and family connections, has managed to finagle himself a job as 3rd Assistant Director (i.e. go-fer) on the set of Olivier’s next movie, The Prince and theShowgirl. Olivier has cast the international sex symbol Marilyn Monroe as “the showgirl” to put a bit of sizzle back in his life - as if being married to Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormand ) wasn’t exciting enough. Monroe was a superstar by this time, with a resume including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry A Millionaire (1953), The Seven Year Itch (1955), and most recently, Bus Stop (1956). She attracts a crowd wherever she goes, and both loves and hates the attention.
Monroe comes to rehearsal with a retinue that includes her new (third) husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, her acting coach, her manager, a bodyguard, etc. She is more than a little nervous to be directed by and costarring with the great Olivier. But their styles couldn’t be more different. Monroe, having recently studied the Method with Lee Strasberg, believes acting requires inquiry into her character’s motivation (although the film they are shooting is a farce). Monroe’s fragile psyche needs to be treated with acceptance, understanding, praise, and love. Olivier is not that sort. He merely expects an actor to be on time, to know her lines, to take direction - in short, to be a professional.
While Branagh’s Olivier froths with frustration, Williams’ Monroe is paralyzed with anxiety. She frets, she can’t get out of bed. She needs a friend; she needs comforting. And therein lies Colin’s little story.
My Week With Marilyn is a sweet, funny little movie, and very well acted up and down the cast. Branagh gives us a volatile, and surprisingly sympathetic Sir Larry, one of his most convincing recent performances. Also featured, in smaller roles, are Michael Kitchen (of Foyle’s War fame); JudyDench (always wonderful); the familiar, yet under-rated Phillip Jackson, as Monroe’s dour bodyguard; Ormond, as the slightly faded, but still intriguing Vivien Leigh; and Emma Watson, as Lucy, a wardrobe girl of interest to Colin, until that platinum blonde walks by. The jury is still out as to whether Watson [Hermione in the Harry Potter series] can actually act; she does a just passable job here.
I kind of liked Eddie Redmayne as Colin. I mean I can’t really fault his performance. But Colin’s story and Redmayne’s performance were so overwhelmed by the supernova character that was Marilyn Monroe and the standout acting of Michelle Williams, that I hardly noticed him.
This movie is quite entertaining, and Williams’ performance may well win her an Oscar and/or Golden Globe in the coming months, so you may want to catch it on the big screen; but it also will do just fine on your home screen, when the DVD is released, if you care to wait.
In theaters.
Incidentally, The Prince and The Showgirl(1957), with the real Marilyn and Olivier is available on DVD from Netflix and elsewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment