I had two opportunities to see My Week with Marilyn for free on a plane, and I didn’t because I had the wrong impression of the movie. I thought that it was going to be a coming of age film, but instead of the guy getting laid by a random girl and somehow magically knowing more about life, the girl would be Marilyn Monroe, and I would have to puke from the plot, not the altitude. I was completely wrong.
My Week with Marilyn is a coming of age film for the author of the memoir that the film is based on, Colin Clark, but it is also a portrait of class and movie making in 1950s Britain. My Week with Marilyn lovingly depicts the flaws, foibles and best attributes of such famous people as Sybil Thorndyke, who was played by Judi Dench, Paula Strasberg, who was played by Zoe Wanamaker, Arthur Miller, who was played by Dougray Scott, Laurence Olivier, who was played by Kenneth Branagh, Vivien Leigh, played by Julia Ormond, and of course, Marilyn Monroe, who was played by Michelle Williams. My Week with Marilyn shows how each person is completely special and maddening and how together they could drive each other nuts without intending to. There is also a sense that people project themselves onto Colin and desperately, futile and jealously try to save him from what they have already experienced.
I was most impressed with Dench’s performance (duh) because she simultaneously presented excellence and professionalism, a generous understanding when others did not behave like her on set and a quick instinct when it was appropriate to hide someone’s flaws or rebuke them. Dear Lord, when I grow up, I want to be My Week with Marilyn’s Sybil Thorndyke.
I just saw The Boys from Brazil so I can say that Branagh got the rhythm of Olivier’s voice perfectly, but not sure about the accent. Who cares? We got Branagh. I’m happy that Scott got a better job than usual because he seems to be slumming it. We all have bills. Eddie Redmayne is becoming one of those actors that always gives such a good performance that you take it for granted and don’t even mention him. Ditto for Michelle Williams who knows when to be helpless, to be a star and to put her foot down.
My Week with Marilyn is a must see period piece that is simultaneously a sympathetically dishy memoir about movie stars and finding yourself.