My Week with Marilyn
Directed by Simon Curtis
Written by Adrian Hodges
Written by Adrian Hodges
with Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh
2011
This is a film about acting. Adapted by Adrian Hodges from Colin Clark’s diary accounts of his first experience of the film industry, it is an odd romance between a star-struck apprentice and an insecure older woman, unhappy with the face her runaway success has presented to the world. Desperate to move out of the shadow of his “over-achieving” family (his dad was art-historian Kenneth, and his older brother future writer and politician Alan), he pursues a career in the industry after being promised a job on Laurence Olivier’s new film, The Prince and the Showgirl. The female lead in this film is to be Marilyn Monroe, and through his role as third assistant director (read: assistant to everybody), Clark ends up first in the star’s confidence, then as a doomed toyboy she clings to during an increasingly problematic shoot.
Apart from a bit of perspective-switching at the outset, between Monroe singing live and that performance being watched on a cinema screen by a captivated audience, director Simon Curtis sits back and allows the actors to make the film. As Clark, Eddie Redmayne holds the centre impressively. He comes across as capable and well-connected, but more naïve than he’d care to realise, and helps make a potentially contrived relationship believable through sheer good-natured ambition, balancing a desire to impress his superiors and improve his own prospects with being genuinely concerned for Monroe’s well-being. Without the essential decency Redmayne gives him, his dalliance with Monroe could have come across as a bit exploitative and starfucker-y, but he (with Curtis) manages to preserve the fact that if anyone is being exploited, it is him.
Understandably, Michelle Williams’ performance as Monroe is the one getting all the attention, and without wanting to regurgitate everyone else’s praise, she is excellent. Marilyn Monroe was a famously complex woman, capable of being utterly captivating but crazy-unreliable; a sex symbol concerned that that was all she could be. Her insecurity shines through in the film: we see her desire to be taken seriously in the copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses sitting in her dressing room; in her foray into method acting; and to a degree in her entire marriage to Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott – brilliant). What is most impressive, however, is the way Williams manages to communicate a single character who is constantly playing different roles herself; not just channeling the on-screen Monroe at her charming best, but a skittish, nervous Monroe completely intimidated by those she sees as ‘proper’ actors; a confident star deftly dealing with a room full of press and admirers; and, perhaps subconsciously, a manipulative sex kitten.
This is one of those films in which a bunch of past icons are played by a bunch of modern icons, so there’s always the risk of it becoming an impersonation-fest, but by-and-large My Week with Marilyn avoids this by using its high-profile characters carefully, and ensuring they aren’t shoehorned in for the sake of it. Kenneth Branaghas Laurence Olivier shines. His performance is not as complex as Williams’, but it doesn’t need to be. He isn’t there to get under Olivier’s skin but to embody him, and his persona is used to great effect to critique that of Monroe. Through Branagh we see the resentment Monroe’s colleagues could feel towards her, and the impatience old-fashioned theatre-types had with the Method; but also his own insecurity at the sheer charisma she just had, capable of blowing him off the screen seemingly without effort. The one example who doesn’t quite sit well is that of Dame Sybil Thorndike (played by Dame Judi Dench), who spends her time in the film’s first half being ridiculously lovely to everyone, handing out warm scarves and resolving union disputes, and counterbalancing Olivier’s peevish impatience with Monroe through tolerance and understanding, only to drift out of the story in the second half. This lack of resolution serves as a microcosm of the film as a whole, in that the situation we are given is so unusual and interesting in itself that the story fails to transcend the fact that it just ended when the film project did, leaving us with a slightly tacked-on “And here’s what I learned” voiceover.
Ultimately, though, this film succeeds through being more than it needs to be. The various impersonation-roles revolve around – and feed – a central performance which goes further than impersonation and achieves a genuine character study, while the slightly scandalous subject matter disguises a very low-key and chaste romance, in the end more of a coming of age story for the protagonist than anything else. While the character of Colin Clark seems a bit of a blank slate compared with the eccentrics and legends surrounding him, the filmmakers’ best move is to never lose sight of the fact that we are viewing events through his eyes: the chaos of a film set; the tension between long experience and inherent talent; and the contradictions between star personas and personal identity. Michelle Williams might steal the show, but she’s given a good show to steal.
Tom
Tom
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