Female Focus
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Also Widely Read By Men My Week With Marilyn
Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), the younger son of a country squire, loves the movies, and uses connections and sheer stubbornness to get an (unpaid) position on the staff of Laurence Olivier’s production company. Sir Laurence (Kenneth Branagh) has cast Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) as his female lead in his new movie, the lightest of light comedies about a European prince who falls for an American dancer, but it
turns out to be far from smooth sailing: Monroe is thoroughly intimidated by Olivier and England in general, eventually only trusting
the rather smitten Colin.
We see this mainly from Colin’s point of view - screenwriter Adrian Hodges adapts the real-life Colin Clark’s two memoirs - and it’s perhaps worth asking if maybe his story of his involvement grew in the telling. Who wouldn’t, in the decades that followed, exaggerate how close he got to the sexiest star of the era? There are occasional points where the words of a more experienced, insightful man come out of the mouth of the 23-year-old Colin’s mouth, which can be a bit odd, considering that he will soon revert to his previous, naive state. This isn’t a bad thing by any means - as a narrator, he seems more reliable than not, and he isn’t nearly as superfluous as the typical “relatively-ordinary guy meant to be the audience’s proxy” character.
Perhaps the most interesting facet of My Week with Marilyn is the way it examines the very concept of a movie star: As much as director Simon Curtis, and star Michelle Williams do depict Monroe as a flawed human being, there’s also something almost alien about her. Put aside Colin’s fairly unremarkable coming of age story, and the entire film is about what a disruptive thing Marilyn Monroe is.
Movie fans will likely watch this movie in part to learn about Monroe, Olivier, and the other big names, but cinema history is not so much the point. As a look at the nature of celebrity, though, “My Week with Marilyn” is both interesting and entertaining.
Cast: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh Director: Simon Curtis Certificate:15 Rating: 4/5 Running Time: 96 min
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