My Week With Marilyn (2011)

In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of 'The Prince and the Showgirl'. The film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams), who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Aurthur Miller (Dougray Scott).

My Week with Marilyn is a film that knows exactly what strings to pull to give the appearance that what you are watching is incredible. It flashes its stars with “epic” speeches right about where they should be and glamour them around in some great costumes/set designs. The process of this story makes the film feel entirely clichéd, but it’s done so well that the impact it leaves on you is not deteriorated in the slightest.

The story that is told in My Week with Marilyn is obviously centered on Marylyn Monroe and how the publicity drowned her into a state of chaos. She’s actually acting when she’s in front of an audience, but behind the scenes she’s an unstable immature woman that is controlled as a mascot for Hollywood. It’s nothing that truly blows you away, nor comes as a surprise, but the pace of the film is executed extremely well. Just when the movie feels a bit too cheesy, light hearted drama, it turns into a far more serious spiral reveals the struggles Monroe went through when she was placed in the spotlight at the wrong time in her life. It’s a trend that stands true for actresses today and will last for as long as the business remains.  

As for the performances, Michelle Williams has worked her way out of my hated pool the last few years and slowly ended up climbing all the way to the top for me with her performance as Marilyn Monroe. Instead of trying to imitate the real woman, she portrayed her own vision of the character and it works wonders because you never spend time trying to compare the two. She lays herself on the reel and shows the vulnerabilities and consequences that came with her fame. In the supporting role, Kenneth Branagh is dynamite. He plays a character I have almost to no information about, but there are numerous moments of the film where the entire scene is focused on him and he speaks with such control and precision, that all of your attention is entirely zoned in on him. It may even be the better of the two in a film that is full of wonderful performances. The weak link here though has to be Eddie Redmayne. He doesn’t do a terrible job, but the script limited his character to be more of a shadow following everyone else around. He feels overmatched and powerless.

This is a film that you may have a hard time falling in love with. It’s a good film filled with great moments that make it feel better than it actually was, but it doesn’t really matter because regardless of your opinion of how much you enjoyed it, you will enjoy it nonetheless. The performances alone by Williams and Branagh should get you to watch it, but everything else can just be icing on the cake.  

Fun Fact: Kenneth Branagh actually directed Thor. He’s the double threat.

Overall Score: 8/10