“Shall I be her?” Marilyn asks Colin as they are quietly confronted by the staff of Windsor Castle. And in a blink of an eye, Michelle Williams is Marilyn Monroe: coy, sexy, beautiful, the most famous woman in the world.
My Week with Marilyn offers a beautifully modulated and layered performance by Michelle Williams, playing a woman so inexplicably and so intrinsically beautiful that any attempted portrayal is likely to fail. But Williams carries it off.
The story
Marilyn Monroe is in England to film The Prince and the Showgirl under the direction of Laurence Olivier. Confronted by some of the great stage actors of the time and a snobbery unique to the British class-system, the Hollywood actress is certainly struggling.
Only recently married to playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn wants to prove she is a great actress. Olivier, on the other hand, had expected to seduce the blonde bombshell – Miller certainly wasn’t on the scene when the initial contract was signed. His wife (Vivien Leigh) is off with Peter Finch, so why shouldn’t he have some fun on set?
But Miller’s presence has put paid to all Olivier’s expectations. Driven by petty jealousy, he makes Monroe’s life hell as he bullies and cajoles her into giving a great screen performance.
Bullying is not the way to deal with Marilyn and she soon takes to her many pills and late arrivals on set. A method actress, she only works when in the right frame of mind - something that becomes less and less frequent on Olivier`s tense set. The young third assistant director, Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), becomes a go-between initially to keep peace on set, but a chaste flirtatious love affair develops between the two.
Colin Clark
My Week With Marilyn, directed by Simon Curtis, is based on the memoir of Colin Clark and his alleged relationship at the age of 23 with Marilyn Monroe whilst on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl.
Son of art historian Sir Kenneth Clark, graduate of Christ Church, Oxford and RAF pilot, the young Clark certainly came from a life of privilege. Family contacts ensured his employment with the Oliviers.
Eddie Redmayne capably captures the refined innocence of the young man about (privileged) town, ever ready with a sympathetic smile or supportive twinkle to the eye. And the gentle, chaste love affair, little more than an occasional stolen kiss (although skinny dipping in the Thames at Windsor means a great deal more to the young man than it does to the teasingly flirtatious three-times married 30 year-old actress), is eminently believable when he and Michelle Williams are on screen.
Sadly, most of the other characters are little more than cardboard cutouts, with little evidence of depth or emotion. Even Oscar-nominated Kenneth Branagh and his florid artifice as Olivier appears to be performing as if in a Thursday matinee of a Terence Rattigan play in 1956 Eastbourne.
Small-part performances by Judi Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike and Emma Watson as wardrobe assistant Lucy add some humanity to the proceedings, but it is essentially Michelle Williams’ film and storyline of her and Colin Clark.
And what a sublime performance by Michelle Williams it is. As she goes into Oscar competition with Meryl Streep and her portrayal of an icon, Michelle Williams will know that she is already regarded as one of the great actresses of her generation. And on this evidence, understandably so.
Personal rating: 2.5 stars
My Week With Marilyn
- Directed by Simon Curtis (Man and Boy, David Copperfield – both TV films)
- Written by Adrian Hodges (Metroland, Tom & Viv)
- Produced by David Parfitt (Shakespeare in Love, The Wings of the Dove), Harvey Weinstein (Nine, Gangs of New York)
- Starring Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain, Blue Valentine), Eddie Redmayne (Savage Grace, The Other Boleyn Girl), Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet, Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets)
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
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