"My Week with Marilyn" is a skillfully presented close look at what previously had been a moderately interesting episode in the lives of the two well-known performers: Marilyn Monroe and Sir Laurence Olivier. Like "The King's Speech" of the previous year, it is accomplished from every angle but hinges on an inspired impersonation at the center: Colin Firth as King George VI in "Speech" and Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in "Week." Williams nails Monroe as well as anyone could. Although she is no lookalike, she comes close enough so that with careful breathing and enunciation she can approximate the original. Williams is not yet familiar enough (or distinctive enough) to general audiences to have established her own indelible screen persona, so she is easily acceptable as the Monroe character, who at one point reveals that when her lovers discover she is not really "Marilyn," they fall out of love with her. She not only acts "Marilyn Monroe," but, fulfilling the intentions of the screenplay, gives us Norma Jean Baker acting Monroe for the star-hungry masses.
There are several levels to this exploration of not only a person, but a whole group of people at high positions in the acting profession at a time of transition from one style of acting to another, as illustrated by the team that gathered for the production of "The Prince and the Showgirl" back in 1956. Kenneth Branagh equally nails Sir Laurence Olivier, the director and male lead in that undertaking, he who pronounced "motion pictures" as "MO-syon PIC- tyoors." Supporting actress Dame Sybil Thorndike, who in 1956 was a venerable institution of the British theatre, is played, appropriately enough, by that contemporary venerable institution of British theatre and international film Dame Judi Dench, who appears in one film after another these days. Emma Watson, Dominic Cooper and other fine actors do what they can in subsidiary roles but they never steal attention from the two leads. Eddie Redmayne, as the innocent young man whose first job in the film industry is to act as go-between for Monroe and the power players of the production, projects the proper insecurity and fascination with the task at hand. Julia Ormond doesn't quite inhabit Vivien Leigh, who was entering middle-age when "Showgirl" was being filmed; her shift in tone from sweet, warm, supportive friendliness to jealousy-tinged fear and insecurity seems too abrupt, but that sudden shift is the result of editing or incomplete script writing.
It's an insider's film, really – one that will appeal mostly to those who know a lot about Hollywood history or who have some connection with the acting profession.
There are several levels to this exploration of not only a person, but a whole group of people at high positions in the acting profession at a time of transition from one style of acting to another, as illustrated by the team that gathered for the production of "The Prince and the Showgirl" back in 1956. Kenneth Branagh equally nails Sir Laurence Olivier, the director and male lead in that undertaking, he who pronounced "motion pictures" as "MO-syon PIC- tyoors." Supporting actress Dame Sybil Thorndike, who in 1956 was a venerable institution of the British theatre, is played, appropriately enough, by that contemporary venerable institution of British theatre and international film Dame Judi Dench, who appears in one film after another these days. Emma Watson, Dominic Cooper and other fine actors do what they can in subsidiary roles but they never steal attention from the two leads. Eddie Redmayne, as the innocent young man whose first job in the film industry is to act as go-between for Monroe and the power players of the production, projects the proper insecurity and fascination with the task at hand. Julia Ormond doesn't quite inhabit Vivien Leigh, who was entering middle-age when "Showgirl" was being filmed; her shift in tone from sweet, warm, supportive friendliness to jealousy-tinged fear and insecurity seems too abrupt, but that sudden shift is the result of editing or incomplete script writing.
It's an insider's film, really – one that will appeal mostly to those who know a lot about Hollywood history or who have some connection with the acting profession.