My Week with Marilyn

Simon Curtis – 2011 – England

While not a groundbreaking film by any means, My Week with Marilyn is still significantly more enjoyable that the film whose making it chronicles; the Laurence Olivier-directed The Prince and the Showgirl (1957).  Granted, there may be no actress who could convincingly play such a legendary figure as Marilyn Monroe, but I guess Michelle Williams does as well as anyone I can think of at the moment.  Based on a true claim, the story unfolds from the point-of-view of Colin Clark, a capricious dreamer who craves nothing as much as being able to hobnob with the stars and who gets a job as a production assistant on Olivier’s film.  Eddie Redmayne plays Clark, (who was the son of the great art historian Kenneth Clark), and Kenneth Branagh plays Olivier in an amusingly dead-on impersonation.  The casting of Branagh is appropriate, if not perfect, of course, because not only has he often been regarded as Olivier’s heir, but he has even competed with Olivier as a helmer of Shakespeare movies.  I have my doubts about the how true this “true story” is, being little more than an unverifiable boast about a brief fling with Marilyn Monroe by a guy who, by his own admission, has few other notable accomplishments in life.  But that has nothing to do with the quality of the film, I suppose, so I can’t hold that against it.