My Week with Marilyn

‘My Week with Marilyn’ 2011 is a biography drama film directed by Simon Curtis. The movie is based on Collin Clark’s memoirs, “The Prince, the Showgirl and Me” and “My Week with Marilyn”.

The movie depicts the year 1956, when Collin Clark goes to London in the hope of entering the film business, and starts working in Sir Laurence Olivier’s 1957 film “The Prince and the Showgirl” which was then called “The Sleeping Prince”. During the filming of the movie Collin Clark meets Marilyn Monroe on set, and the movie is about Collin’s infatuation with Marilyn and the time he spent with her. In this movie Kenneth Branagh stars as Sir Laurence Olivier and Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe and Eddie Redmayne as Collin Clark.

Even though this movie is a biographical drama, it does not capture the whole life of Marilyn Monroe. Instead the movie is much focused; it captures just one week of her life, and gives the audience an in depth look at her character and her life. This short period of time perfectly distinguishes between the lively, charismatic Marilyn we see on screen and the real life Marilyn. Marilyn Monroe is usually portrayed as alluring, flirtatious and is considered a sex symbol; but this movie captures a totally different side of her.

In bringing out this vulnerability and the insecurities she suffers from Michelle Williams does an impressive job. I don’t think even the word magnificent suffices to describe the performance of Michelle Williams in this movie. One of the great things about this movie is, the director Simon Curtis does not try to bring out a carbon copy of Marilyn. There is nothing fake about Michelle Williams acting either; she does not try to be Marilyn. Real acting is impossible to spot. So instead of trying to be Marilyn, she gives her version of Marilyn Monroe to the audience. There is a dialogue in the movie in which a character remark about Marilyn’s acting “when Marilyn gets it right, you just don’t want to look at anyone else”. That was true about Marilyn’s acting, but now that remark can be applied to Michelle Williams without any hesitation. Even though I have seen couple of her other movies, I hadn’t seen anything much significant about her acting, but in this movie she is exceptional. That’s why she truly deserves the Academy Award nomination she received for this movie and the thirty one other nominations for her portrayal of Marilyn. This is not to underestimate Kenneth Branagh’s performance as Olivier and Judi Dench’s performance as Sybil Thorndike which was also brilliant.

  

I think the script too has been well written with cool dialogues like “first love is such sweet despair”. In another instance when Collin tells Marilyn “you should get out more, you should see the sights” Marilyn sweetly says “I am the sights”. Obviously the movie score too adds great color to the movie. Williams sings some of Marilyn’s songs like “I Found a Dream”, “That Old Black Magic” and “Heat Wave”. Furthermore Nat King Cole’s songs like “You Stepped Out of a Dream” and “Autumn Leaves” too are perfectly used to heighten the mood.

You don’t have to be a huge Marilyn Monroe fan to watch this movie. And you can’t just point out and say that this was the best part of this movie; it’s from costumes, film score to the cast which makes this movie a marvelous piece of art.