Now playing at Philadelphia’s Landmark Theater’s Ritz 5 (2nd/Walnut), “My Week with Marilyn” is a transcendently urgent film about the formative adolescence of Hollywood, which would eventually spawn the monolithic celebrities fawned and drooled over today (Pitt, Roberts, Jolie, Aniston, Gibson, Foster, Clooney, Cruise, Craig, Kidman, etc.) In fact the main reason to see Simon Curtis’ “My Week with Marilyn” is Michelle Williams; you go in expecting, at best, a talented mimicry, but receive a complete encapsulation of a vulnerable, troubled film icon. To be trite, Williams _becomes_ Monroe, but what is more she nails the desperate looks of needing approval, embodying insecurity, harboring sexy fragility and exuding genuine sweet goodness at the heart of Marilyn’s propulsion to universal stardom.
Kenneth Branagh is also a stand-out, playing an actor whom some consider to be the greatest of all time- Sir Laurence Olivier (affectionately referred to throughout this film as “Larry” by his friends and colleagues); in fact, perhaps the most compelling and well-written scene in the entire film involves an introspective monologue analyzing the effect directing Monroe in “The Prince and the Showgirl” is having upon his self-esteem and competence as an actor. Expect Oscar nods to both Branagh and Williams, and perhaps even a win for Michelle, if not entirely due to the greatness of the film and her performance, than more for a film industrial quasi-guilty apology to Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, herself, and the emotional and psychological anvil Hollywood dropped on a beautiful, innocent soul.
The narrative is based on a book written by Colin Clark, the third assistant director to the British film “The Prince and the Showgirl”, published later in his life, toward the end of his film-making career. Marilyn entered into an emotional relationship (we never learn, explicitly, if it was ever adulterous and sexual) with Colin during her own marital discord with Arthur Miller during the filming of “The Prince and the Showgirl.” We witness the struggle of Monroe to exhibit true talent beyond the sexual aura of a film star, and the cruel, cantankerous way Olivier treated the film icon lacking in classical training but embodying everything about commercial success Olivier himself desperately wanted. It makes for compelling drama, if somewhat forced at times- but never unmoving. Judi Dench is also excellent as Dame Sybil Thorndike, a veteran British actress who treated Monroe with kindness, respect, deference and loving support.
There is a meta-cognitive self-consciousness about this film that is hard to get past, even more so than all film. (For all film, naturally, portray actors portraying people, but whenever you have the making-a-film-within-a-film storyline, using real historical players, the self-referential loop becomes almost quantum in its confusion.) It doesn’t detract from the film, exactly, but it definitely had me continually thinking back to all the things I had ever read or seen about Monroe, her troubled foster-cared upbringing, longing for a stable marriage and desperate desire for a loving family base.
Hollywood is a rough town to thrive in, to use an overused cliché. Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith, Jonathan Brandis, Brittany Murphy- each of them struggled to feel good, produce art and make it in a cruel marketplace, failing with death- and the list goes on. “My Week with Marilyn” really captures how in fact unappealing fame can be, and how destructive. Marilyn’s lack of self-worth as an actress, sense of self as a person and fear of abandonment are all classic signs of Borderline Personality Disorder, which she most likely struggled to overcome. The people surrounding her did not want or try to help, either- they merely enabled her dysfunction in order to draw box-office receipts. They say sex sells, and Hollywood used Marilyn to extract what it needed, as the international public got what it wanted.
Finally, it is meaningful that Michelle Williams was cast as Monroe. She bore Heath Ledger’s daughter, Matilda, and certainly knows first-hand what it is like to be touched by an industry that exacts fatal emotional and psychological tolls from its laborers. In that Heath Ledger would die from the same causes as what (it is thought) eventually killed Marilyn- drug-induced escapist suicide- Michelle Williams embodies this real woman with all the more knowledge, heart-breaking authenticity and death-spell clarity. This is not the happiest film, but it is highly recommended.
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