My Week with Marilyn

I thought this movie was going to be going over muchly rehashed material about how difficult Marilyn was to work with, etc. I mean, we've had numerous books by Tony Curtis, remembrances re: Some Like It Hot (which was shot right after The Prince and the Showgirl), ad infinitum. And we do get that. But what we also get is a close, personal look into the turmoil that not only was Marilyn, but also Lord Laurence Olivier. And that I find fascinating.

The story is based on a tell-all of a short encounter of a stagehand and the famous Marilyn Monroe on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, which was to be Lord Olivier's triumph. However, Marilyn famously kept the entire company waiting, over and over, and it was said that the two really never connected. No wonder, as this film points out. He was trying to be a film star, and she wanted to be a stage actor, good at her craft. Neither met that goal in this disaster.

Michelle Williams doesn't, to my liking, look much like Marilyn at all. Except that sometimes there's a camera angle that really captures MM's spirit, or her coquettishness. Williams rightly gets it that Marilyn was an act for the woman, and that sometimes it was hard to slither into. She does, indeed, slither in this role, and gets all the moves right. If she doesn't quite look like her in the face, we can forgive that.

I was never bored throughout even though I had a perfect right to be. I mean, you pretty much know what will happen almost each step of the way. But the actors are superb, even in the small parts, and it's just a joy to be on set with them all.

It's truly amazing to me that Kenneth Branagh didn't gain at least an academy award nomination for this role. He is exacting; every word is precise as might have been spoken by the great Olivier. Olivier knew he was great when he was great, but, as all actors do, he had nagging doubts, great fears each night before he performed. And on film, he tended to be over-the-top rather than subtle. Having his famous wife, Vivian Leigh (played so nicely by Julia Ormond) , play the level-headed woman in the background is almost laughable if it weren't tragic; her schizophrenia, which, at her age, was just beginning to bust out. The two together were the British Empire's true king and queen of theatre, yet living in complete chaos.

It's a fascinating look at different styles, of famous lives about which we romanticize so much. Thumb's up.