My Week With Marilyn is a splendid little picture. It’s a bit like The King’s Speech, at least inasmuch as it’s a mid-20th century British-set period piece lovingly done by a competent cast. It’s an honest and not overly tidy tale; it’s cautionary catnip for starfuckers, with a surprisingly strong performance by Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. If this sounds at all like something you’d enjoy, you probably ought to see it.
The story centers around 23 year old Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), an assistant to the great Shakespearean actor Sir Laurence Olivier (played here by a terrific Kenneth Branagh). Olivier has cast Marilyn in his picture The Prince and the Showgirl. Marilyn proves quite a handful, and her caprice and Lohan-esque antics on set drive Olivier and everyone else a bit bonkers. Colin is asked to keep an eye on her, she works her inevitable magic on him, and a short little nova ensues.
Why a nova? It’s not really a romance — it’s far too one-sided for that. It’s more Colin-moth plus Marilyn-flame equals (unilateral) conflagration, though admittedly a willing and totally enjoyable one. Forced to describe their affair without resort to moth imagery, I’d say it’s a cross between superficial teenage wish fulfillment (think princess fantasies or Monte Carlo) and Naomi Wolf’s worst nightmare.
This Marilyn is a true siren. She casts a spell on men — pretty much all men — that is immediate, strong, undeniable. The film hammers this home through her continual encounters with schoolboys, barkeeps, the public at large. It’s very well done. She’s neither a cruel schemer nor an exploited airhead — she’s a romantic Midas weathering a neverending torrent of insta-smitten putative Romeos. Whether she tries to be sexy or not, they swoon either way. Surrounded by a thick buffer of sycophantic yes-men who shower her with praise every waking minute, she accepts it as her lot.
I’m grateful that My Week doesn’t tread the tired path and make the private, behind-the-curtain Marilyn somehow less alluring than her public self. Rather, she’s portrayed as something probably closer to the truth: A woman who, public or private, on or off, intentionally or not, captivated nearly any man she encountered. Historians tell of such creatures (Helen of Troy, anyone?) and I stand ready to believe that the real Marilyn could quite readily have been this.
We do glimpse the dichotomy (glamorous leading lady in public, tormented moper in private), but it’s not overdone, and Colin doesn’t gain special entree by understanding the “real Marilyn” or any such thing. Rather, he’s swept up in her spell like everyone else, and happily for him finds himself the momentary object of her attention. This is played to grand effect, with an understandably chuffed Colin showing up places with gasp-no-it-can’t-really-be-her on his arm. (Romcom fans take heed — this is what Notting Hill wanted to be. Like, exactly.)
My Week doesn’t altogether shirk its duty to paint some Marilyn backstory. As the film (and their brief interaction) progresses, we’re treated to a few expository exchanges that flesh out Marilyn’s fear of abandonment and also begin to scratch at what Colin wants in life — but these are couched among outbursts of characteristically sycophantic Marilyn-placating of the type that emanates from nearly every other character at regular intervals. Colin is appropriately doe-eyed, deferential, and largely sycophantic, as any properly smitten young man might be. This actually makes Marilyn-Colin dialogue-parsing quite fun. With every line spoken, ask yourself: Is this a searching prod for Marilyn-truth, or another knee-jerk and reflexive effort to soothe a drugged-up diva? (Hint: It’s usually the latter.) As romances go, there’s not much there there. And, perhaps ironically, that’s what makes it so real.
Colin is a kid with a crush. He’s warned in no uncertain terms that Marilyn does this — grabs hold of some starry-eyed gent for a day or a week, only to dash him on the rocks and move on. These cautions go unheeded, as they must. Redmayne and all other male actors do a fine job of capturing the helpless, almost wistful abandon with which Men Who Know Better willingly surrender to Marilyn’s charms. (Remember Nicole Kidman‘s sailor in Eyes Wide Shut? One passing glance in a hallway and she was ready, in that instant, to leave her husband and everything she knew and run away with that man. Well, Marilyn is that sailor to literally every dude on Earth.) Though it’s hard to feel bad for Colin: after all, he lives every man’s dream for a week, takes his knocks with youthful rebound, and gets a ripping story out of it all.
The rest of the film documents the filming of Olivier’s picture, and is also very nicely done. The supporting cast is marvelous (Judi Dench in particular). Lucy from wardrobe (Emma Watson), Colin’s real-world partial love interest (who of course can’t compare to Marilyn), is just right.
And then there’s Marilyn. I’m no fanboy, but I’ve seen enough of Marilyn Monroe to pronounce with some minimal authority that Michelle Williams nails this one to the freaking wall. I’ll never know what she really was like, but so far as I’m concerned, she was like this.
HAUS VERDICT: The story? Every fan’s dream, as it might actually play out. Strong performances in a fun period piece, with a dazzling portrayal of Monroe.