My Week With Marilyn (2011)

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Simon Curtis
    Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, 
    Julia Ormond, Emma Watson, Toby Jones
The allegedly true, behind-the-scenes story of what happened when Marilyn Monroe went to England in 1956 to film "The Prince and the Showgirl" with Laurence Olivier. It's based on the diary entries of Colin Clark, a smart, wide-eyed 23-year-old embarking on his first job as a gofer on the film. Over the course of the shoot, Clark strikes up a friendship with Monroe, or maybe something more than that, and takes on the task of keeping her ahead of her demons enough to get through the picture. There's a lot of "My Favorite Year" in this, but it's not played so much for laughs. Monroe (Michelle Williams) is visibly battling the pills, booze and personal issues that would eventually do her in, the architect and victim of her own outsized fame. Peter O'Toole's advantage as the Errol Flynn surrogate in "My Favorite Year" was that he didn't have to play Errol Flynn. He could channel Flynn through Peter O'Toole. Williams has to play Monroe as Monroe, and if she can't actually be Marilyn, she nails her famous moves and poses about as well as anybody could. Branagh's equally good as the arrogant, demanding Olivier, and Redmayne has a likable, open-faced presence as Clark. You're left to wonder whether everything you see here actually happened, or whether some parts were embellished a little to tell a more interesting story. At one point, Clark goes to Monroe's quarters to retrieve a script, and Monroe walks into the room naked. The scene is jaw-dropping, not because it's all that explicit (it's not), but for the way it captures in a couple of seconds both the relationship between Monroe and Clark and the wish-fulfillment fantasies of 100 million men. For some people, maybe most, that's what Marilyn Monroe was all about.