My Week With Marilyn

Rated R
Runtime: 99 minutes

My Week With Marilyn is a true story. In 1956, Marilyn Monroe traveled to England to make The Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Laurence Olivier. Monroe and Olivier were both huge stars, but very different in their styles and personalities. A young film student by the name of Colin Clark managed to get himself a glorified gopher job on the set, and he later wrote about the experience.

As Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) so aptly puts it in the film, Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) was a beloved stage actor who wanted to be a movie star, while Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) was a popular movie star who wanted to be a serious actress. After describing the difference to Marilyn, he adds that he doesn't think that this particular film is going to help either of them. It probably didn't.

Marilyn, just recently married to playwright Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), has problems with director and co-star Olivier from the first. She's late to the set; she has trouble remembering her lines. Olivier has little patience with that kind of behavior, and his frustrations only serve to make Marilyn more nervous and less cooperative. Dame Sibyl Thorndike (Dame Judi Dench) does her best to make Marilyn feel welcome and comfortable, but with limited success.

Colin, who's engaged in a flirtation with a pretty girl who works in wardrobe (Emma Watson), is as mesmerized by Marilyn as the rest of the men on the set. When he actually meets Marilyn face to face in the course of his duties, there's something about his kindness that causes the frail actress to gravitate to him. Only then do we begin to learn, along with Colin, about the woman behind the very public persona.

All of the performances in My Week With Marilyn are good, most notably that of Kenneth Branagh. But Michelle Williams is the real standout. She's already won numerous awards for her performance, and deservedly so. There were moments where I believed the filmmakers had inserted actual footage of Marilyn Monroe herself, and then I'd get a better look and it would be Michelle Williams. The voice, the mannerisms, her every movement was absolutely perfect. The making of the movie within the movie only enhanced Branagh and Williams' great talent.

The sets and costumes were lovely and appeared entirely authentic. The script, while sometimes a little slow (I didn't really care for the side story between Colin and Lucy, the wardrobe girl), provided the audience with what seemed to be real inside information and insight into two show business legend with an obvious emphasis on Monroe.

BOTTOM LINE My Week With Marilyn shows less of the Marilyn we all know and all but worship on the silver screen, and more of the deeply troubled and exceedingly fragile woman that she was. By turns light and heartbreaking, the movie may pose more questions than it answers. But the answers offered are some that, whether we necessarily needed them or not, are both troubling and satisfying in the end.

POLITICAL NOTES None

FAMILY SUITABILITY My Week With Marilyn is rated R for "some language." I don't think it warranted the rating that it got, but at the same time, younger children aren't going to enjoy or appreciate a movie like this one anyway.