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I think that I’ve discovered a running theme this awards season: actresses delivering award caliber work in films that are far beneath their talent levels. Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain in The Help spring to mind. From what I’ve gathered of Meryl Streep’s filmography of the past few years, The Iron Lady seems to be heading in this direction. But I think that My Week With Marilyn might take the cake for a film in which a lead performance carries the entire weight of its worth.
Filmed and written with the passion and emotional integrity of a really expensive Lifetime movie, My Week With Marilyn tells the fairy tale story of a third-assistant director’s alleged affair with the world’s most famous movie star and sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe. The biggest fault is that at no moment does this story ever feel the slightest bit believable, especially once you read up on the well-documented dust-ups that happened and discover that Colin Clark originally wrote rather disparaging things about Monroe in his first book, The Prince, The Showgirl, & Me. Magically, a few years after that book was published came a book called My Week With Marilyn which detailed the alleged affair that Monroe had with Clark for roughly nine days.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that while dealing with Olivier’s aggressive outbursts and rejected romantic advances Monroe would look for anyone in the product to be friendly to her and be nice with. I just don’t for a minute believe his story of a romantic interlude. It doesn’t help that, as written and performed, he distinctly lacks any kind of engaging personality, wit, charm, anything that makes for a compelling lead character. Scenes with just Clark are lifeless and remove energy at an alarming rate.
It’s up to Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh to save this. A veritable host of British acting legends – Derek Jacobi, Dame Judi Dench among them – cameo, but Branagh and Williams steer the ship. Branagh as Sir Laurence Olivier is type-casting at its finest, and he bellows and gives a big performance that feels just right. But Williams had the harder task – how do you play one of the greatest screen legends, sex symbols, and pagan goddesses of all-time without dipping into caricature and feeling like you’re just giving a lazy piece of mimicry? Williams knows that Monroe’s beauty was something that can’t be acted or even recreated, but she creates a gripping and phenomenal portrait through body movement and vocal inflections. She captures the mercurial quality that keeps me coming back to Monroe as both a star and an actress.
I just wish she had been granted a better film to showcase her formidable talents as an actress. As it stands, this is a very shiny display case with a note reading: “Michelle Williams’ Oscar goes here.” See it for the performances, and try to bear with the lazy and shoddy camera work and writing.
