I have said before that I enjoy, I actually mean truly thoroughly love, movies about the making of movies, especially if they are based in fact, of the true realities of the making of movie magic.
It's a story that needs no huge explanation, except to state the obvious. My Week with Marilyn documents the making of the movie The Prince and the Showgirl in 1957, which starred Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams in a defining role) and Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), as experienced and witnessed through the eyes of Colin Clark (based on two of books he penned), a young aspiring movie maker on his first job ever.
Sir Laurence Olivier's stoical British masterful handling of the crafts of acting and filmmaking are about to be shook up by the emotional cloud which famously followed Marilyn Monroe, from the moment she arrived with her new husband Arthur Miller, and her acting coach Paula Strasberg, and her business partner Milton H. Greene. When Arthur Miller abruptly leaves, it is Colin (Eddie Redmayne) who steps in as the comfort to the legendary wreck that was Marilyn Monroe off screen...
There is a lot to make you want to stay away from this movie. There's the usual, "Not another bad representation of Marilyn Monroe," and the, "Not another Dawson Creek toothache (Michelle Williams)". Lord knows that this is a movie I have avoided for those very two reasons, but colour me detracting, Michelle Williams is phenomenal in the role that should forever have her walking in my smallest of opinions as a force to be reckoned with.
The role of Marilyn is one that is almost Shakespearean in it's challenge, to play such an icon and manage to avoid falling into the trap of being nothing but a caricature is a mammoth task. I watched this movie yesterday, I have been stewing since then to convey this sense of achievement I have for Ms. Williams in this role, I'm so proud of her. I know it's sickening but as every moment unfolded I was literally captivated and impressed by the subtlety of a performance that could have been, and which I expected to be, so easily overacted.
But there is more to this than Michelle Williams, and that is not to take anything away from her in the least, the movie has got a brilliant cast and is superbly acted, with both Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh earning Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor nominations respectively, but let's just label Dame Judi Dench, Julia Ormond, Dominic Cooper and Eddie Redmayne. But that's not all, the story is special in that it is also titillatingly a glimpse into the persona that is so brilliantly crafted so as to address and honour all that fascinates us about the personality without her entire life being the centre of the movie.
We know she was tormented and had her demons, had a difficult childhood, had addictive tendencies, scandals and troubled relationships, was painfully insecure and struggled with her screen persona which she could not and would not ever escape - the story has been told in so many ways, so many times before - but Michelle brings a humanity to that image. She was never by any reach my first choice, I would go so far as to say she isn't pretty enough, but she is undeniably Monroe-ishly sexy, and is able to bring said humanity in the subtlest of moments and gestures in a movie which only affords her limited time to accomplish it.
And yet, while her entire life isn't the central focus, I have to say that it does offer a viewpoint on an entire life. This is how I see it, Marilyn Monroe was not the 1st great movie star (as is so often lauded upon her), that diminishes those that came before, she is instead a perversion of this, in my viewpoint she was the victim of a phenomena which has destroyed so many and warped the fabric that makes up Hollywood, and still does. They weren't paparazzi or the receiving audience yet, they would become that, but their old form defined her existence. Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith and Princess Diana would be victims of mutated forms of this phenomena, and Lindsay Lohan plays dangerously with a glimpse she once had with an incarnation thereof - Fame and attention of that size is a dangerous beast, impacting dangerously on your own self image as it defines you, and in my opinion Marilyn Monroe was the first victim of her own fame.
Deep stuff, like I said I have been stewing, and yet while the movie does lend itself to those thoughts, this is only because we all know the tragedy that is the story of Marilyn Monroe, thankfully and entertainingly this movie is not as heavy, it's light really, a fleeting glance at what would happen lies under the surface of a thoroughly entertaining and humerous tale of movie magic.
Take the chance and give Michelle William's Marilyn Monroe a go, you won't regret it!
So the 84th Academy Awards is an interesting one for me, and I'll get into that, but all I will say for now is Girl with the Dragon Tattoo! So rest safe in the knowledge that I have stuff to say in the future, and that with this post we are now 69 movies into our task!
nuff said...
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