My Week With Marilyn (2011)

Prestige films come in several forms. Some are legitimately great, while others are frustrating messes that do little besides mimic what a “prestige” film is supposed to feel and look like. (See: J. Edgar) Then there are movies like My Week with Marilyn, which lean so heavily on a single performance that everything else just seems like an afterthought. There is nothing horribly wrong with the film; it’s just that there isn’t a whole lot to it besides Michelle Williams’ terrific turn as the most famous sex symbol of the 20th century. She does great work, but she spends most of her time holding the film up with her bare hands. The script is shallow, the direction pedestrian, and most of the other performances more or less slide by without making an impact. My Week with Marilyn is as flimsy as fall releases come, and is proof that one great performance does not necessarily make a film wholly worthwhile.

Much of the film’s plot is told from the point of view of Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), a young man with dreams of becoming a filmmaker. He is hired by Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) to act as third assistant director on his film The Sleeping Prince, which will eventually be called The Prince and the Showgirl. Production becomes troubled when Olivier hires Marilyn Monroe (Williams), who is constantly late to the set, relies heavily on her acting instructor (Zoë Wanamaker) and is very uncooperative in general. Of course, people are much more forgiving of Monroe when she turns up the sexy. She is a woman who becomes the center of attention wherever she goes, and Williams well portrays the excitement and the stress that comes with this level of fame. My Week with Marilyn is incredibly effective as a look inside the mind of a true superstar; the likes of which has never been seen before and will never be seen again.

The film is much less successful at just about everything else. While many of the other characters are fun to watch onscreen—an all-too-brief role for Judi Dench comes to mind—none of them exist to do anything besides “oh, ain’t that Monroe girl a piece of work?” That extends to the film as a whole. Besides the fascinating work of Williams, there is nothing else here that the film is all that interested in exploring. The Colin Clark character in particular is criminally uninteresting. He is supposed to be our way into this mad, mad movie-making world, but even he doesn’t end up being anything more than just another guy swooning in the presence of Monroe. He begins a brief romance with a costume designer named Lucy (Emma Watson), but that—like so many other plot points—is more or less discarded to make way for more scenes of Williams doing what she does best.

Relying so heavily on Williams would be fine if My Week with Marilyn had anything new or exciting to tell us about Monroe. Instead, it shifts into autopilot and does precisely what it needs to do to exist as a film. We get brief tidbits about Monroe’s past and many moments of captivating vulnerability, but it’s all just so… obvious. As the characters in My Week with Marilyn all trip over themselves at the mere sight of Monroe, the audience comes to the realization that they aren’t doing much more than we are. We aren’t watching a film full of interesting characters featuring a single marquee performance; we’re a watching a film about people watching said marquee performance. The only reason to see this film is the stunning performance by Williams, but you’ll likely even be able to see plenty of that as we dive headfirst into the muck of awards season.

Grade: C+