NYFF Diary #9 - My Week With Marilyn

Simon Curtis's My Week With Marilyn purports to take the viewer behind the curtains to meet the real Marilyn Monroe, but in truth the movie operates from a perspective as starry-eyed as the pushiest autograph hound.

Chronicling the filming of Laurence Olivier's The Prince and The Showgirl, My Week is based on the memoirs of young third assistant director Colin Clark who struck up a brief relationship with Marilyn during filming. Right from the start, having Clark as the dreamy, naïve protagonist not only slows things down to a crawl so we can trudge through all the coming-of-age clichés in the book - I lost count how many times we heard some variation on "Don't fall in love with her, kid." - but it guarantees we will always be at a distance from the subject, watching through a haze of dewy idol-worship. Imagine if Topsy -Turvy was called My Week With Gilbert and all the great backstage material was constantly interrupted so we could watch the eager young stagehand flirt with the comely stage manager. Oh wait, they already made that as Me and Orson Welles, and the clichés were just as boring in that movie as they are here.

My Week With Marilyn not a complete waste of time. Eddie Redmayne in the lead does the best he can with all the coming-of-age slop he's forced to shovel, while Michelle Williams does an heroic job with the impossible task of embodying the former Miss Norma Jean Baker. She strikes the right balance between trying to capture Monroe’s mannerisms and aura without getting too bogged down in impersonation to deliver an original performance. It’s not quite Christian McKay’s blow-the-doors-off performance as Orson Welles but it’s close, and McKay had better material to work with. 

As Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Branagh is a hoot, hamming it up to the point I half-expected him to yell “ACTING!” every time he finished speaking. The filmmaking scenes are by far the best in the film as Olivier quakes with frustration trying to direct his temperamental, rarely sober star who shows up hours late to the set every day only to keep everyone waiting as she works through her method acting exercises with Paula Strasberg. It takes all Olivier's patience not to yell, "Can't you just fucking PRETEND?" It would be fair to accuse Branagh of playing it all too broadly to remain convincing, but when the film is already so far from authenticity we in the audience are grateful for his effort.

Of course, for all her difficulties, when Monroe nailed a take, she nailed it like no one in the history of movies. Unfortunately, the film is just as mystified as Olivier as to where this came from. As dignified as Williams's portrayal is the film ends up diminishing Monroe, giving the impression her performances were less the result of skill than some unexplainable magic that occurred if you let the cameras roll long enough.

5 out of 10