My Week With Marilyn

Let's be honest, My Week with Marilyn is a good movie, not great or spectacular by any means. It keeps your attention, it's interesting in the kind of way that any story about fascinating people is interesting: it doesn't have to be any better than it is. But the bigger picture here is its star: Michelle Williams, who turns in the sort of fierce, star making performance that no wonder she has been getting nominated for every single award so far this season.
My Week with Marilyn is a story about the most famous actress of all time, Marilyn Monroe. But it is also a story about Colin Clark, a 23 year old boy from an overachieving family who dreams of becoming a filmmaker. So the movie, based on his memoir, follows the young man as he gets his very first job working on what looks to be a ghastly musical comedy eventually entitled The Prince and the Showgirl. He is the third assistant director, which is really just a gopher. However, the position puts him into the thick of the film. He is practically the assistant to the great Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), who is the star and director of the film. Colin's story chronicles the difficult relationship between Olivier and Monroe. Despite being married to Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond), Olivier is at times jealous of her super stardom (he is a great actor who wants to be a superstar and she is a superstar who wants to be a great actor, madly in love with her, and short tempered with her difficulties.
Colin not only is privy to the inside track of the film, but also he becomes one of Marilyn's only friends during filming. The notorious actress hated to be alone and when her new husband of less than a month, Arthur Miller, leaves London, she clings to the young boy, who quickly falls in love with her, despite a budding romance with Emma Watson's Lucy, a wardrobe girl. And so, Colin gets to spend a week or so with Marilyn, and what follows is a sometime riveting, sometime frivolous look at young love, rejection, heartache, and of course, the portrait of a troubled and sad young woman.
The film itself is good at times, but lacking. It's inconsistent when it could have been something great. All the right pieces were in position, they just somehow weren't utilized properly. But the performances save the movie, for sure. Judi Dench, who seems to be everywhere this year, lighting up films that could definitely use it, is a hoot as the sweet natured actress who lends a helping hand to the scared Marilyn. Eddie Redmayne is sweet and charming as the young Colin Clark who falls in love despite everyone telling him not to and ends up getting his heart broken "a little." (Emma Watson's perfect response? "Good."). Kenneth Branagh is just fantastic as the mercurial Olivier, the greatest actor of his generation who both hated and loved Marilyn. But it's Michelle Williams, who I have long admired and is becoming a genuine favorite of mine, who is the crowning jewel here. She doesn't simply play Marilyn Monroe here. She becomes her. She so easily and simply transforms before our eyes into this sexy, charming, deeply trouble superstar, the icon who still endures all these years later. Her Monroe is all things at once: so simply turning from sexy and charming and flirtatious to scared and timid, paranoid and insecure. She's this sexy, sensual woman and also just a little girl who ultimately wants to be loved, not like the goddess she was but also like the normal girl she so desperately wanted to be. There is a fantastic scene between Marilyn and Colin in her bedroom where she tells him about her childhood and her plans to settle down and leave it all behind. She tells him that people want to love her as Marilyn Monroe but when they find out that not who she is they leave her and run away. It will break your heart, as does Williams' devastating beauty as the icon that you just can't take your eyes off of. Is an Oscar win in her near future? I think so.
Grade: B