To quote a phrase: if you look up “sex symbol” in the dictionary, a photo of Marilyn Monroe would stand alone. (And Probably take up the whole page) Her myth endures despite the nearly 50 years since her death of an overdose of sleeping pills. Part indomitable goddess, part vulnerable child-woman, nifty actress, insoluble enigma. Who the hell’s going to play her onscreen?
Michelle Williams!?!?
Much as I loved Williams in Wendy and Lucy, Blue Valentine, and Brokeback Mountain, this observer and many others were skeptical she could pull it off. The glamor quotient was something she hadn’t previously displayed. While very easy on the eyes, did she have the right kind of looks? Could she pull that grace off on screen? I was mistaken in ever thinking she couldn’t
My Week With Marilyn Williams is a hands-down Oscar nominee and deservedly so. Some might say that the rest of the film strikes one of “peanut-butter-and-jelly” alongside Williams’ foie gras and truffles. But the moment Williams walks on screen the screen the movie continually scintillates and provokes.
The Movie Star Marilyn “illusion” Williams puts out, while never synthetic, balances perfectly with her private Marilyn’s self-awareness regarding her own fragility. She seems ready to fall apart totally one moment, then snaps into a totally in command flirtation mode, complete with a knowing wink and giggle, whether the object is the adoring public or press, or this film’s main character, Colin Clark, third director on Monroe’s new film, The Prince and The Showgirl. There is an art to projecting a multi-facted personality, especially one of this magnitude, without caving in to cliches or mockery. Williams’ Marilyn always seems of a whole cloth while effortlessly segueing from glamor queen to emotionally bruised damsel and back again.
The Prince and The Showgirl was directed by the legendary Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branaugh), who is also Monroe’s co-star in the film. Much is made of the tension between Olivier and his classically trained cast (including a sympathetic-to-Marilyn Judi Dench) and the absent-minded, struggling Monroe, who uses the newfangled method acting style and actually brings a protective coach with her on the set. Branaugh’s preformance is either likely to be brushed aside and taken for granted or overpraised. His Olivier, while witty and perceptive, doesn’t exactly imbue the character with depth, although that is largely the fault of Simon Curtis and Colin Clark’s screenplay, based on Clark’s memoir from the 1990s. Olivier’s wife, the renowned actress Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormand) is shortchanged even further, reduced to a jealous, petty shrew.
My Week With Marilyn, had it strived for more than a snapshot sketch (albeit an intriguing one) might have overshot its mark. Limited by the confines of an earnest (and embellished?) account of a stranger to Marilyn who’s suddenly given intimate proximity, the film is able to approach its subject at a comfortable distance looking in. Yet since this isn’t a “real” biopic, the lightness of so much insider movie-making (while well-done) and huffiness on the part of Marilyn’s advisers often overshadow Marilyn herself. We couldn’t care less about Curtis (Eddie Redmayne) except his bringing us to Marilyn, yet he’s in what seems like an interminable number of scenes without a trace of Marilyn.
Luckily, Williams takes the proceedings up several notches. As the story unwinds, her seriousness and faith in her subject both sustain the film and give the viewer the feeling that, yes, Marilyn could very well have been much like this. At first a puzzle inside of an enigma, but by the conclusion of My Week With Marilyn, a Norma Jeane Baker, who’s at once absurd, complex, and finally, capable of being understood.
8 sex symbols (out of 10)