TJE 7/6 – My Week With Marilyn (2011)

Once upon a time in 1956, Marilyn Monroe and her husband, playwright Arthur Miller, went to England so Monroe could star in Laurence Olivier's new film, a light comedy called "The Sleeping Prince," which would later be released as "The Prince and the Showgirl." The production was difficult, and Monroe had a brief affair with a young assistant on the film, Colin Clark – at least according the diaries he published containing his account of what went on during filming.

Over fifty years later, "The Prince and the Showgirl" is an obscurity, but Monroe, Miller, and Olivier have become legendary figures. Monroe in particular has never lost her mystique. So why shouldn't we have another film about Marilyn Monroe, in all her troubled, fascinating, larger-than-life glory? Why shouldn't we take a look back at that moment in time when arguably the greatest British actor of the last century and a Hollywood icon shared the screen together? Well, after watching the film, I kind of wished I'd sat down with "The Prince and the Showgirl" instead.

The trouble is that "My Week With Marilyn" gets entirely carried away with the notion of Marilyn Monroe as the ultimate movie star. It keeps telling us emphatically over and over again how magnificently charismatic and genuine and sexy she is. At one point, Colin (Eddie Redmayne) proclaims that Olivier is a great actor trying to become a movie star, while Monroe is a movie star trying to become an actress. So much hinges on Michelle Williams' ability to channel Monroe, but she's more like Olivier, and that's the fatal flaw here. Williams is a very, very good actress, one of the best currently working, but she's never been a movie star. She doesn't have that great natural presence that made Marilyn Monroe what she was.

This is not to say that her performance isn't good, because it is. Williams' Monroe is a beautiful wreck, always late to filming, always catastrophically unprepared, fumbling through simple lines and relying heavily on the help of her acting coach Paula Strasberg (Zoë Wanamaker). She's often heavily medicated, and always in the middle of some emotional crisis, to the weary despair of Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), and the endless frustration of Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), who is both directing and co-starring in the picture with her. However, the film argues that Monroe's allure is strong enough to overcome all of this, to the extent that a star-struck young Colin Clark will ignore the affections of pretty young wardrobe assistant Lucy (Emma Watson), in favor of chasing after the impossible Monroe.

Over and over again, the script breaks the cardinal rule – show, don't tell. Williams is good enough an actress that she can summon up a good facsimile of Marilyn Monroe's shine, but not to the degree that the movie demands of her. I have to wonder if Monroe herself could have lived up to the version of Marilyn Monroe the film so desperately wants. Olivier is pretty much ignored by comparison, which allows Branagh to make him into a real human being, thankfully. The same goes for Dougray Scott as Miller, Julia Ormond as Vivian Leigh, and all the other actors playing famous names. Eddie Redmayne holds his own with them very well as Colin Clark, though the character is as trite and unremarkable as they come.

It's disappointing how manufactured "My Week With Marilyn" feels. It has all the earmarks of the worst kind of Oscar bait. You have one great performance, around which a much weaker film has been built. The treatment of the material is entirely too maudlin and sentimental, drawing heavily on nostalgia for a bygone age that most people don't remember anymore. You have small supporting and cameo roles for several well-regarded older actors for no other reason than to have them appear in the picture – in this case Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench, and Toby Jones. And finally, something that's become more prevalent in recent years, there's even some star-power for the soundtrack. The moody theme composed by Alexandre Desplat is performed by none other than the popular Chinese classical pianist Lang Lang.

"My Week With Marilyn" tells us nothing new or insightful about Marilyn Monroe, but is content to simply burnish her legendary status. It feels like such a wasted opportunity, considering the caliber of the cast, and especially the performance that Michelle Williams delivers. The film is so limited by its premise, giving us only glimpses of the troubled marriage between Miller and Monroe, and certainly not enough of Olivier. I should also point out that this is the first film for director Simon Curtis, whose work until now has been in television. This feels like a television production at times, very broad and terribly unsubtle.

Frankly, I think Marilyn Monroe deserves better.
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