Want to impress a date? You could do worse than take them to see My Week with Marilyn, starring Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh, writes Chris Sullivan...
I was amazed. The other day, a friend of mine, who’s 25 years old said he had no idea who Marilyn Monroe was.
His best guesses were she was a singer or a model or maybe off the telly and it was in the 70s. He was right about the first three but not in the way he’d guessed.
Monroe was not only the world’s BIGGEST and most famous movie star, breaking box office records with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot, but also began worldwide fashion trends that continue to this day (Madonna based her whole image on her) and was one of the most gorgeous, most fascinating creatures ever to walk this planet.
To this day her performances can turn a chap into a lump of quivering jelly which is exactly why one man’s story of his one week with her has inspired a major motion picture, My Week With Marilyn, produced by Harvey Weinstein.
The man in question was Colin Clark, brother of right wing politician Alan and son of Lord Clark who, after Eton and Christ’s church Oxford, did the unmentionable in 1956 and got a job on the movie The Prince And The Showgirl as third assistant director (aka gopher) for director, actor and walking ego Laurence Olivier – the undisputed King of Theatricals.
Larry, thinking he was the mutt’s nuts, had brought in Monroe to play opposite his Grand Duke Charles, prince-regent of Carpathia, as the clumsy American showgirl who he meets at The Coconut Girl Club in 1911.
But, Monroe is unable to come to terms with her iconic status and is instead drinking and popping pills, which makes her late on set and forget her lines and causes friction between her and Olivier.
According to Clark (who milked the whole alleged scenario with two books, a documentary and now a movie) Monroe, who was having major problems with her husband, playwright Arthur Miller, and felt entirely undermined by Olivier, turned to him for a shoulder to cry on.
More of a study of the nature of fame and the associated loneliness, the film features some great performances, especially from Michelle Williams in the lead role who, unlike past actresses who have played Marilyn, ditches the squeaky girl voice for Norma Jean’s real accent.
And, in many ways, playing Marilyn is a tricky business: the whole point of the film is that Marilyn was so drop dead gorgeous she could render men and women speechless and that, as she proved in real life, is rather hard to handle (Marilyn died of an overdose in 1962). While Williams is less attractive than her subject, she manages to convey the loneliness that only the most beautiful and most famous woman in the world might feel.
But the star of the show is Kenneth Branagh who is superb as his hero, Larry Olivier, and portrays him beautifully as pompous, snobbish and outrageously vain while bringing down the house with surprisingly nimble comic timing. A most enjoyable movie that I would heartily recommend for a date.
Want more?
- London Film Festival 2011: The pick of the flicks
- The FIm Blog: Popcorn Diaries
- More film news on redbull.com
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