My Week With Marilyn (January 2012)
(Directed by Simon Curtis 2011)
Biographical tales on film have to bend your imagination a little because of the challenge in finding actors who truly resemble the character from history they are portraying. In these days of prosthetics a lot can be done to enhance and transform the face. A broader chin here, a pointier nose there.
How then do you offer a visualisation of a memoir written by Colin Clark who was the third director on the movie The Prince and the Showgirl starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe ? On the one hand we have a glamourous and attractive stage and movie star of the twentieth century, and on the other we have an iconic sex symbol. Both these actors have played formative parts in the psyche of anyone interested in stage and cinema over the age of 60. Perhaps therefore, Kenneth Branagh and Michelle Williams are able to get away with their portrayals without too big a leap of faith. Williams is able to do this through the decent direction – glimpses of Monroe’s earlier performances as played by Williams are spliced into the story to show us where she has come from.
The story offers us a Monroe that aspires to be not an iconic film star but a serious actor. This she is trying to achieve by employing “method” acting teacher Paula Strasberg Someone should have told her that this was not the film to practice her method acting with. Branagh releases his frustration on Zoe Wanamakers excellent Strasberg , “Well, you had better tell her to pretend to believe in her character…”. We also see sweeping shots of what she is reading in her bedroom, James Joyce’s Ulysses , an echo of the Eve Arnold portrait. It is the play between Olivier and Monroe that offers the more interesting episodes of this memoir, as observed by Clark, played by Eddie Redmayne. His boyish portrayal of Clark is the story thread of the film. This relates to how he falls in love with Monroe, who is beginning her addiction to barbiturates and allowing her vulnerability to affect everything she does. Her (paid) supporters protect her ego which gets a battering in the process of her clashes with Olivier on the film set.
This is a very British film which has all the trappings of a re-watchable movie.
