my week with marilyn movie review

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By some tantalizing alchemy, Marilyn Monroe imprinted an idea in the minds of much of the human race around 1950, and for many, that idea is still there. In the early 1950s, my friends and I required only one word to express it: marilynmonroe. It wasn't a name. It was a summation of all we yearned and guessed about some kind of womanly ideal. Sex didn't seem to have much to do with it. It was more a form of devotion, a recognition of how she embodied vulnerability and sweetness and hope and fear.

The success of "My Week With Marilyn" centers on the success of Michelle Williams in embodying the role. With the blond hair, the red lipstick and the camera angles, she looks something like Monroe, although she's more petite. What she has is the quality that was most appealing: She makes you want to hug her, not have sex with her. Monroe wasn't bold in her sexuality, not like her contemporaries Jane Russell or Brigitte Bardot . She held it tremulously in her grasp, as if not knowing how to set it down without damaging it.

"My Week With Marilyn" is based on the true story of a young man named Colin Clark, who talked his way into a job on "The Prince and the Showgirl" (1957), a movie being directed in England by Laurence Olivier , the nearest thing to royalty among British actors. For one troubled week, while Monroe's husband, the playwright Arthur Miller , was absent in Paris and production was on hiatus, she asked the worshipful, 23-year-old kid to join her at a getaway cottage.

She was 30. They were alone. One night, they went skinny-dipping in the moonlight. That's about it. There's a suggestion they had sex, but the movie is coy. The way I read it, it was about a gift. Aware of what marilynmonroe meant to someone like Colin Clark, grateful for his sympathy and protectiveness, in need of company, she gave herself. Apparently she had a way of sometimes taking mercy like that.

For serious relationships, she preferred alpha males: Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller, and by some accounts, Robert Mitchum and John and Bobby Kennedy. She admired their brains. She was smart but had no confidence. She was in search of mentors and father figures. In her acting, she fell into the orbit of Method guru Lee Strasberg , and his second wife, Paula. She brought Paula to England and seemed incapable of making a move without her. This aroused the anger of Olivier, who despised the Method and considered acting a job to train for and work at without any bloody nonsense.

Gifted with this week, Colin Clark recorded it in a diary, which later became a book. Diaries ran in the family. His older brother, Alan Clark, wrote one of the greatest of 20th century political diaries. For Colin Clark, the week with Marilyn wove a spell from which he was never freed.

This film is a fragile construction. There is no plot to speak of. The character of Colin Clark ( Eddie Redmayne ) is surrounded by many others who have more presence and charisma: Olivier, played by Kenneth Branagh with barely concealed fury that his own crush on Monroe was impossible; Arthur Miller ( Dougray Scott ), with his deep American accent, disengaged from Marliyn's world; Paula Strasberg ( Zoe Wanamaker ), fixated on Monroe, deaf and blind to others.

Julia Ormond plays Vivien Leigh , Olivier's wife, who sees through him, weighs the threat from Monroe and sees he isn't the equal of a Miller or DiMaggio. Judi Dench is Dame Sybil Thorndike, also acting royalty, who patiently explains to Olivier that it doesn't matter if Monroe can't act, because when she's onscreen, nothing else matters. And Toby Jones as the press agent, who is crass, belligerent and irrelevant. Redmayne is well-cast as Colin Clark. He plays him as young, brash but somehow unworldly, with a helplessness that may remind Monroe of herself.

The movie seems to be a fairly accurate re-creation of the making of a film at Pinewood Studios at that time. It hardly matters. What happens during the famous week hardly matters. What matters is the performance by Michelle Williams. She evokes so many Marilyns, public and private, real and make-believe. We didn't know Monroe, but we believe she must have been something like his. We're probably looking at one of this year's Oscar nominees.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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My Week with Marilyn (2011)

Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller

Eddie Redmayne as Colin Clark

Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier

Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh

Dominic Cooper as Milton Greene

Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe

Directed by

Simon Curtis
Adrian Hodges

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Movie Review | 'My Week With Marilyn'

Glamorous Sex Goddess, Longing to Be Human

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By Manohla Dargis

Nov. 22, 2011

In 1976, the year that Marilyn Monroe would have turned 50, Larry McMurtry wrote that she “is right in there with our major ghosts: Hemingway, the Kennedy brothers — people who finished with American life before America had time to finish with them.” Almost a half-century after her death, the world, or at least its necrophiliac fantasists, still haven’t finished with Monroe and try to resurrect her again and again in movies, books, songs and glamour layouts featuring dewy and ruined ingénues. Maybe it’s because it’s so difficult to imagine her as Old Marilyn that she has become a Ghost of Hollywood Past, a phantom that periodically materializes to show us things that have been.

The latest attempt at resurrection occurs in “My Week With Marilyn,” with Michelle Williams as the Ghost. The movie is largely based on a slim 2000 book that a British documentary filmmaker, Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne, in a role of many smiles and little depth), claimed was a true account of an intimate interlude he spent with Monroe in 1956 while they were making “ The Prince and the Showgirl .” At the time Monroe was newly married to Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott) and hoped that the film, based on a Terence Rattigan play, would help her move past sexpot roles. But the shoot turned into a clash of egos and cultures that threw her, leading her co-star and director, Laurence Olivier, to damn her as “the stupidest, most self-indulgent little tart I’ve ever come across.”

This is Sir Larry the Cruel, an assessment cemented by the miscast Kenneth Branagh’s intermittently amusing, unctuous take on Olivier as a pitifully vain, insensitive clod. Those familiar with Olivier, who was 49 when he made “Showgirl” and still strikingly handsome, may be distracted by the physical differences between him and Branagh, whose soft face registers as a blur compared with Olivier’s sculptured solidity. Branagh makes up for this disparity somewhat with his crisp, at times clipped, enunciation and a physical performance that gives Olivier enough vitality so that when, early in, the character sweeps into his production office with his wife, Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond, a wan placeholder for the original), he dazzles Clark and jolts this slow-stirring movie awake.

Clark, the son of the art historian Kenneth Clark , decided at 23, as he put it, to run away to the circus by working in the movies, an easy enough goal because his parents were friends with Olivier and Leigh. He became a glorified gofer on “Showgirl” (officially, its third assistant director), a position that involved managing Monroe, who during the shoot soon went from bad to worse, from late to missing in action. Her already strained marriage was one reason; Olivier was another. “Just be sexy,” he told Monroe, “isn’t that what you do?” No wonder she misbehaved: The man she idolized as the world’s greatest actor — and whom her production company hired — was a chauvinist bum.

He didn’t get Monroe, and she is similarly out of the grasp of this movie. Ms. Williams tries her best, and sometimes that’s almost enough. She’s too thin for the role, more colorlessly complected than creamy, but she whispers and wobbles nicely. (The costumes hug her tight, but wrongly round out her breasts, which should thrust like rockets ready for liftoff.)

The problem isn’t Ms. Williams or the serviceable work of the director Simon Curtis, but a script by Adrian Hodges that hews faithfully to Clark’s clichés. Instead of the complex woman familiar from the better books about her, the film offers a catalog of Monroe stereotypes: child, woman, smiling exhibitionist, shrieking neurotic, the barefooted free spirit and, lamentably, the martyr teetering in heels toward her doom.

The tragic Monroe is obviously dramatic, but the intimations of disaster don’t fit a movie that works so hard to be breezily, easily likable. Everything on screen looks good and period-appropriate, if also too manicured, as if the past had been digitally spruced up. Mr. Curtis, who has long directed for television (his credits include the 1999 BBC production of “ David Copperfield ”), here tends to arrange everything in the frame neatly, often by putting people and other focal points dead center. This isn’t uncommon in comedy, where such centeredness helps build tension as you wait for comic anarchists to wreck a meticulously organized world. In “My Week With Marilyn,” this visual approach adds nothing and comes across as generic, as do as the jerky, handheld newsreel shots and popping photo bulbs.

Mr. Curtis enlivens the movie with music, busyness and Zoe Wanamaker’s darkly comic, toadying turn as Monroe’s acting coach, Paula Strasberg, as well as, always, the promise of the real Monroe. (Emma Watson has a thankless part as a diversion for Clark.) Mr. Curtis’s most unwise filmmaking move, however, is to put Ms. Williams continually into familiar Monroe poses and quote her famous photos and films — nude Marilyn, tousled Marilyn, singing Marilyn — a strategy that undermines his efforts to turn the idol into a person. He shows that Monroe is aware enough of her image that she knows — with a wink, a smile, a shake and a shimmy — how to turn her persona on for public consumption, but he too can’t escape wanting and always returning to that Marilyn Monroe.

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“Shall I be her?” she asks Clark, who, like this film, would like nothing better.

“My Week With Marilyn” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Foul language, drug and alcohol abuse and discreet female nudity.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Directed by Simon Curtis; written by Adrian Hodges, based on the diaries of Colin Clark, “The Prince, the Showgirl and Me” and “My Week With Marilyn”; director of photography, Ben Smithard; edited by Adam Recht; music by Conrad Pope, with “Marilyn’s Theme” by Alexandre Desplat, piano solos by Lang Lang; production design by Donal Woods; costumes by Jill Taylor; produced by David Parfitt and Harvey Weinstein; released by the Weinstein Company. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes.

WITH: Michelle Williams (Marilyn Monroe), Kenneth Branagh (Laurence Olivier), Eddie Redmayne (Colin Clark), Dominic Cooper (Milton Greene), Philip Jackson (Roger Smith), Derek Jacobi (Owen Morshead), Toby Jones (Arthur Jacobs), Michael Kitchen (Hugh Perceval), Julia Ormond (Vivien Leigh), Simon Russell Beale (Cotes-Preedy), Dougray Scott (Arthur Miller), Zoe Wanamaker (Paula Strasberg), Emma Watson (Lucy) and Judi Dench (Sybil Thorndike).

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My Week With Marilyn Reviews

Williams makes the most of her underwritten role by giving a performance that proves to be the film’s raison d’être.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 6, 2023

Unfortunately it doesn’t use its uniqueness to create something special.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Michelle Williams' finest performance...

Full Review | Feb 7, 2022

Boasts brilliant performances and whimsical humor, but even the most emotional and poignant encounters don't offer the lasting impact of an immersive connection.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 30, 2020

There's little resisting the attraction toward Williams' magnificent portrayal of Monroe.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 17, 2020

'My Week With Marilyn' benefits greatly from a charismatic performance by Michelle Williams, who faithfully embodies all the aspects that characterized the personality of that Hollywood goddess. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 24, 2020

Michelle Williams is amazing. She rose to the enormous challenge of portraying the iconic beauty Marilyn Monroe, capturing both her physical nuances as well as her distinctive personality attributes such as her sultriness, playfulness and sadness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 22, 2020

You should really take some time and check this out. It's a great performance piece by Williams and a well-told coming of age story.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jan 11, 2020

My Week with Marilyn says so much in a short time capsule

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 6, 2019

The film wants to have its cake and eat it regarding the tragic mythological baggage of Monroe.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 31, 2019

It is with great imagination that Williams reveals the rest of what Marilyn Monroe was really all about.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 6, 2019

While it's hardly revelatory, the film itself is something both lovely and consistently engaging.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 6, 2019

Combined with stirring music and luminous cinematography, My Week with Marilyn is a marvelous picture.

Full Review | Jan 26, 2019

Williams is simply superb as the talented but troubled Monroe.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 4, 2019

My Week with Marilyn at its best is a frothy, funny and charming depiction of one theatrical great reacting to another.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 5, 2018

My Week With Marilyn is a compelling look at Marilyn Monroe's insecurities - but Michelle Williams doesn't fully convince as the film legend.

Full Review | Aug 24, 2018

... the movie overall doesn't quite live up to the sum of its best parts.

Full Review | Oct 23, 2017

The Marilyn Monroe story has been told to death and it is a tribute to the filmmakers that they have found a new and refreshing angle to present her irresponsible behavior fed by manic insecurities

Full Review | Sep 18, 2017

[My Week with Marilyn] is a delightful and entertaining movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 8, 2017

When we are on the movie set or at press conferences, the film is delicious. And acidly funny.

Full Review | Aug 30, 2017

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My week with marilyn: film review.

Simon Curtis' biographical drama co-stars Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne and Judi Dench.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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NEW YORK – The luminous Michelle Williams gives a layered performance that goes beyond impersonation in My Week With Marilyn . Playing both the damaged, insecure woman and the sensual celebrity construct, as well as the role with which Marilyn Monroe was struggling during a particularly difficult shoot, Williams gets us on intimate terms with one of Hollywood’s most enduring and tragic icons. If much of what surrounds her in Simon Curtis ’ biographical drama is less nuanced, her work alone keeps the movie entertaining.

Following its premiere as the Centerpiece gala of the New York Film Festival , the film will be released Nov. 4 by the Weinstein Company, which likely is planning an awards-season push behind Williams.

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My Week With Marilyn

To the extent that Michelle Williams' multilayered interpretation of Marilyn Monroe serves as its raison d'etre, "My Week With Marilyn" succeeds stunningly.

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To the extent that Michelle Williams’ multilayered interpretation of Marilyn Monroe serves as its raison d’etre, “ My Week With Marilyn ” succeeds stunningly. Otherwise, the film flits uneasily between arch drawing-room comedy and foreshadowed tragedy as perceived by infatuated young Brit Colin Clark ( Eddie Redmayne ), recounting his personal experiences with the fragile screen icon during the shooting of 1957’s “The Prince and the Showgirl.” Taking no chances, unlike its star, “Marilyn” complacently coasts on Williams’ bravura perf amid mostly stodgy showbiz re-creations, but awards buzz and ever-reliable Anglophilia could spell solid B.O. returns for the Weinstein Co.

Popular on Variety

It’s through Clark’s eyes that Monroe is introduced as she arrives in London for the first time, accompanied by new husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott). She proceeds to seduce and captivate the press, although no amount of charm works on Olivier, whose explosive ego seems ill suited to the job of placating director. Olivier’s literal-minded belief in letter-perfect discipline conflicts with Monroe’s more coddled Method acting, the professional insecurities of both stars — one rising, one falling — exacerbating the problem.

Feeling dissed, abandoned and misunderstood in a strange land (her husband having returned to New York), Monroe latches on to Colin as her champion and confidant (“Why is Sir Larry so mean to me?”), someone who can support her against the old guard. The two share a sexually charged but platonic intimacy, Colin apparently being the latest in a long line of such lads.

Hodges’ script deliberately contrasts the hidebound aristocracy of the British stage with the natural, untutored spontaneity of Hollywood; at one point, Sybil Thorndike (Judi Dench) reminds Branagh’s Olivier that, unlike them, Monroe knows how to act for the camera. Ironically, then, “Marilyn” is all too stagily directed by theater- and TV-trained Curtis, lining up his characters with no attention to spatial logic or rhythmic flow. Every moment, period detail, antique roadster or TWA passenger plane seems carefully placed for superficial authenticity; although this approach sometimes plays effectively against Williams’ continually morphing performance, it leaves the film’s non-Monroe sections mired in artifice.

Thesping is surprisingly hit-or-miss, given the roster of English luminaries; Branagh’s exclusive use of theatrical rhetoric works better in comedic scenes than in the film’s occasional attempts at emotional depth. Dench’s performance is rousing but familiar; Redmayne brings a bright-eyed, puppy-dog eagerness to his role; and standout Toby Jones strikes a rare eclectic note as a loudmouth American press agent.

But the film belongs to Williams, whose tour-de-force turn conflates three Marilyns: the lost, damaged little girl who seeks to escape others’ expectations and return to simpler childhood days; the sexy superstar who impishly poses with a wink in complicity with her public; and the actress playing a pre-scripted part. The genius of the performance lies in the way Williams stresses the interconnectedness of these personalities: The neediness fuels the impudence, the vulnerability turns sexually provocative, and the little girl and sexpot together drive the screen role.

Thesp even ventures into saucy singing and dancing a la Marilyn in the pic’s opening and closing numbers.

Production: A Weinstein Co. (in U.S.) release of a Weinstein Co., BBC Films, Trademark Films production. Produced by David Parfitt, Harvey Weinstein. Executive producers, Jamie Laurenson, Simon Curtis, Ivan Mactaggart, Christine Langan, Bob Weinstein, Kelly Carmichael. Co-producer, Mark Cooper. Co-executive producer, Colin Vaines. Directed by Simon Curtis. Screenplay, Adrian Hodges, based on the diaries by Colin Clark.
Crew: Camera (color, widescreen), Ben Smithard; editor, Adam Recht; music, Conrad Pope; music supervisors, Maggie Rodford, Dana Sano; production designer, Donal Woods; art director, Charmian Adams; set decorator, Judy Farr; costume designer, Jill Taylor; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS), Richard Dyer; supervising sound editor, Nick Lowe; re-recording mixers, Mike Dowson, Adam Scrivener; special effects supervisor, Mark Hold; visual effects supervisors, Alan Church, Sheila Wickens; casting, Deborah Aquila, Nina Gold, Tricia Woods. Reviewed at New York Film Festival (Centerpiece Gala), Oct. 9, 2011. (Also in Mill Valley Film Festival -- Centerpiece.) MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 101 MIN.
With: Marilyn Monroe - Michelle Williams Colin Clark - Eddie Redmayne Laurence Olivier - Kenneth Branagh Milton Greene - Dominic Cooper Vivien Leigh - Julia Ormond Lucy - Emma Watson Sybil Thorndike - Judi Dench Paula Strasberg - Zoe Wanamaker Arthur Jacobs - Toby Jones Owen Morshead - Derek Jacobi Arthur Miller - Dougray Scott

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My Week With Marilyn: Michelle Williams as Monroe being mobbed by English private school boys

My Week With Marilyn – review

I n 1956, Marilyn Monroe came to Britain to make a movie at Pinewood Studios with Laurence Olivier . This was the tense and ill-fated light comedy The Prince and the Showgirl, scripted by Terence Rattigan, a film that became a legend for the lack of chemistry between its insecure and incompatible stars. One was a sexy, feminine, sensual and mercurial diva. The other would go on to make Some Like It Hot.

The story is told – or part of it – in this intensely enjoyable, entirely insubstantial movie featuring glorious performances from Kenneth Branagh and Michelle Williams as Olivier and Monroe, participants in a love triangle of two stars and a nobody. The whole thing is seen from the standpoint of the film's star-struck third assistant director, Colin Clark, son of the great art historian Kenneth, and younger brother of the notorious Tory MP Alan. The movie-mad youngster had wangled a job in Olivier's production office, been hired as a dogsbody on the movie, and something in this pretty ingénu caught the eye of Marilyn herself. With her genius for enslaving dazzled men to a courtier's life of gallantry and self-abasement, she made him her confidant and helpmeet. In 1995, Clark published his diaries from that time, but then in 2000, landing a deferred dramatic punch, published a further memoir – on which this film is based – revealing an intimate, romantic week alone with Marilyn when her husband Arthur Miller had gone away. Of course, he fell hard for the bewitching star.

Was Clark on oath with all the details? And could it actually have been his closet gay streak – not mentioned in this film – which Marilyn sensed more shrewdly than Colin himself, and which made her feel safe around him? Maybe. Either way, it is a beguiling adventure. Poor Colin, out of his league and out of his depth.

Eddie Redmayne does a very good job as Colin, but the scene is utterly stolen from him in various ways by the two above-the-title players. Branagh is tremendous as Olivier: this is a part he was born to play. It's a marvel to see the corners of his mouth extend outwards, in a grimace of distaste, and his eyes become dead black discs, like the eyes of a diamondback rattlesnake preparing to digest a large mammal. The Kenny/Larry combination results in a nuclear fission of camp-theatricality. It is a complete joy to see Branagh's Olivier erupt in queeny frustration at Marilyn's lateness, space-cadet vagueness, and preposterous Method acting indulgence. He sometimes appears to be channelling the older and more sinister Olivier of Marathon Man, a movie in which the great man was again paired with a Method performer. But Branagh revives Olivier with wit, intelligence and charm.

However, in art as in life, Olivier's spotlight is taken away by Marilyn, played terrifically well by Williams: this is a figure she recreates, not by hamming up the pouty lips and breathiness, but the scared and brimming eyes, wide with unshed tears – terrified and angered by the thought of another explosion of temper from "Sir Olivier". She is childlike and yet always aware at some unconscious, almost physiological level of how she is shaping and controlling the situation. Olivier is furious at the continued presence of her acting coach, Paula Strasberg (Zoë Wanamaker), but Marilyn's key strategic victory comes when Sybil Thorndike, played with robust wit by Judi Dench, sides with Marilyn in an argument and tells Larry not to be a bully in front of the entire crew: a betrayal that sours him permanently. And then Marilyn, to Olivier's bemusement and vague resentment, ups her game while capriciously taking up Colin as her temporary favourite.

Simon Curtis's film shows how sexual intrigue is such a compulsion on a film set that it must always find an outlet somewhere, somehow. Everyone might have expected a sexy spark between Olivier and Monroe but it was not to be because they were both so needy, both so used to adoration. So the sexiness is displaced on to the hapless Colin himself; he is the lightning conductor. The film set is the perfect place for an intense, illusory affair: the idea that a sexual fling "doesn't count on location" is now an industry truism, because it is a world where the rules of the boring outside world are suspended. I was reminded of Truffaut's Day for Night, where the business of filming is itself madly sexy.

As for Clark himself, blinded by the powerful Klieg light of Marilyn's sexy celebrity, did he misremember or misinterpret their week together, making that historically dire film? Not necessarily. But it was clearly the greatest moment of his life, which occurred at a time when stars, however surrounded by courtiers, could still have these serendipitous "morganatic" meetings with ordinary mortals. My Week With Marilyn is light fare: it doesn't pretend to offer any great insight, but it offers a great deal of pleasure and fun, and an unpretentious homage to a terrible British movie that somehow, behind the scenes, generated very tender almost-love story.

Period and historical films
Marilyn Monroe
Laurence Olivier
Michelle Williams
Kenneth Branagh
Drama films

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My Week With Marilyn Review

New york film festival review: michelle williams and kenneth branagh excel in this showbiz tale..

3.5 out of 5 Stars, 7/10 Score

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In 1820, Charles Caleb Colton wrote the famous quote, "Imitation is the sincerest (form) of flattery." In the 21st Century, where we're bombarded with imitation, that quote might not ring as true as it did back in the day, although it does hold up in the fantastic film My Week With Marilyn, and actress Michelle Williams' stunning portrayal of Marilyn Monroe. Not only is My Week With Marilyn the Oscar bait most of us presumed it would be, it's also a starkly hilarious peek inside the filmmaking system of the 1950s.

My Week With Marilyn is based on the memoir by Colin Clark, who, in 1956, at the age of 23, found himself working on the Sir Laurence Olivier film The Prince and the Showgirl, as a third assistant director (i.e. production assistant). Little did Colin know that his life would be turned upside down by one simple casting decision: bringing Marilyn Monroe to London where she would star as the Showgirl opposite Olivier. Monroe was at the height of her fame in 1956, just a year removed from The Seven-Year Itch. The Prince and the Showgirl was the first (and only) movie she produced, along with the first (and only) movie she made outside the U.S. Hollywood system. It becomes quickly apparent that Marilyn might be more trouble than she's worth, constantly arriving late to work and insisting her acting coach Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wannamaker) be right by her side, to help sculpt her rigid method style of acting. While her antics drive everyone on the set away from Marilyn, Colin is continually drawn closer to the screen icon, and as the plot unfolds, we're brilliantly reminded why and how Marilyn Monroe had the whole world eating out of the palm of her hand.

What I was most surprised about in My Week With Marilyn is how scathingly funny it is, with most of the humor coming from the fantastic Kenneth Branagh as Sir Laurence Olivier during his rants about Marilyn. Screenwriter Adrian Hodges does a fantastic job of balancing the levity of a chaotic movie production (without an abundance of "inside baseball") with the intriguing relationship that builds between Marilyn and Colin. It is deftly paced at just 99 minutes, and there isn't a single frame that feels out of place or unnecessary. What's even more surprising is Adrian Hodges is best known for his work on the small screen, primarily for creating the British genre series Primeval. Director Simon Curtis is in relatively the same boat as well, making his feature film debut after 20 years of producing and directing TV movies. I surely hope they both don't go back to the small screen after such a gorgeous and compelling movie like this.

After receiving her second Oscar nomination last year for Blue Valentine (her first was in 2005 for Brokeback Mountain), I can't see any possible scenario where Michelle Williams won't at least get her third Academy Award nod for this riveting performance. When I brought up the imitation/flattery quote earlier, I didn't mean to sully her performance by suggesting Michelle Williams mocks Marilyn Monroe. However, anyone who has seen a Marilyn Monroe movie before will be blown away by Michelle Williams' voice as Marilyn, which we see right away with her rendition of the song Heat Wave from There's No Business Like Show Business. Marilyn Monroe's iconic voice has been parodied countless times throughout the years, in various forms of entertainment and media, but I can't remember anyone being as spot-on as Michelle Williams in this movie, and not just with her voice, but facial expressions, her flirtatious, suggestive poses she gives when the cameras are around, the whole nine yards. But the beauty of her performance, and this movie as a whole, is it takes us beyond the legend and gives us a real account of what Marilyn Monroe was like as a person, both the good and the bad. Eddie Redmayne gives an admirable yet somewhat flat performance as Colin Clark, although I suppose most performances would seem flat next to Williams, and Kenneth Branagh simply shines as the tormented Sir Laurence Olivier, whose tirades will have you in stitches. The rest of the cast is littered with talent from the likes of Judi Dench, Julia Ormond, Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, Dougray Scott, Derek Jacobi, and Emma Watson, and it's impressive that Simon Curtis could assemble such an impressive cast even for rather small roles. Like most great movies, though, each of these actors are given their moments to shine in unique ways, which is even more impressive since this is just a 99-minute movie.

I remember the first time I watched Some Like It Hot, which interestingly enough was the movie Marilyn Monroe starred in directly after The Prince and The Showgirl. What I remember most about the movie, still considered to this day as one of the greatest comedies of all time, is that Marilyn Monroe just might have been the most alluring woman in the history of human civilization, years before surgical beauty was en vogue. Everything about her, from her voice, body, pouty looks, made it impossible for you to take your eyes off of her. My Week With Marilyn manages to give us a glimpse of Marilyn Monroe's unique allure once more, with a spellbinding performance by Michelle Williams, and a story with the double-edged strength to jerk some tears and split some sides.

My Week with Marilyn is out November 23, 2011.

Movie and TV Reviews
My Week with Marilyn (2011)

My Week With Marilyn Review

25 Nov 2011

My Week With Marilyn

The ‘my week’ chronicler in Simon Curtis’ entertaining ‘no business like show’ tale observes that Marilyn Monroe was a movie star who wanted to be a great actress, and Sir Laurence Olivier was a great actor who wanted to be a movie star. He ruefully concludes that The Prince And The Showgirl, a lack-much-lustre adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s comedy The Sleeping Prince, would serve neither’s purpose.

The hype around the film of the filming — scripted by Adrian Hodges from two memoirs by Clark, the first a journal of the shoot and the second a probably highly fanciful account of his alleged idyll with Monroe — centres on Michelle Williams’ impersonation. Williams pretty much nails the three faces of Marilyn in popular culture: needy little girl lost, intoxicating sexpot and spontaneous actress. Marilyn’s indefinable magic proves more elusive, but Williams does a nice job shedding her own mannerisms to channel Marilyn’s. Eddie Redmayne is endearingly callow as the adoring Clark, his enchantment with Marilyn making their flight from the uptight Brit contingent and hangers-on a chaste, childlike escapade.

Essentially this is an extended anecdote in which Kenneth Branagh steals the show, priceless as thespian and director Olivier, vain and anxious, his desire for Marilyn turned to hot indignation with her chronic insecurities keeping troupers like Dame Sybil Thorndike (a warm Judi Dench) waiting around for hours for Marilyn to put in an appearance and do a spot of acting. Whenever she does emerge she is accompanied by her Method mentor Paula Strasberg (Zoë Wanamaker), whose coaching from the sidelines cranks up Olivier’s rage to incandescent.

A score of distinguished British actors flit through as Olde English all-sorts while others — Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones — oblige as loudmouth Yanks in the Hollywood parade passing through. Emma Watson gets a look in as the wardrobe assistant Colin makes a play for until he is distracted by Marilyn’s crises, crack-ups and uninhibited charms. It all adds up to nothing much really, but flashes of feeling and a bit of balloon-bursting keep it engaging.

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My Week With Marilyn: movie review

Michelle Williams captures Marilyn Monroe's fragility and guile, but not her aura – a tall order – in 'My Week With Marilyn.'

By Peter Rainer Film critic

November 23, 2011

" My Week With Marilyn " presents Michelle Williams with a foredoomed challenge: Make us believe she really is Marilyn Monroe . Very few performances based on movie icons have been anything more than paper-thin impersonations – one big exception: Judy Davis as Judy Garland – so by this reckoning Williams does rather well. She captures not only Monroe's fragility but also the guile and gumption beneath it. What she can't capture, of course, is Monroe's aura, and without it, the performance comes across as something more than mimicry but less than incandescence.

Directed by Simon Curtis and written by Adrian Hodges, the film is based on a series of memoirs by Colin Clark , an upper-class Englishman who, straight out of college, served as a third assistant director in 1957 on "The Prince and the Showgirl," which costarred Monroe with its director, Laurence Olivier (played in the film by Kenneth Branagh ).

Like seemingly every male who ever entered her orbit, Clark became smitten with Monroe, who in turn conferred her charm (but apparently not much else) on him. Their duet was aided by the convenient absence of Monroe's new husband, Arthur Miller , who left England shortly after filming began with the marriage already rocky.

The film is seen through Colin's not entirely bedewed eyes. He takes to heart the words of veteran actress Sybil Thorndike ( Judi Dench ), who says of Marilyn, "Be careful, boy. She doesn't need to be rescued." Torn between adoring her and protecting her, of seeing her as child-woman or goddess, Colin ends up altogether befuddled, not unhappily so even when his heart is breaking.

The unhappiest camper in "My Week With Marilyn" isn't Colin. It's not even Marilyn, who is fond of saying things like "Why do the people I love always leave me?" It's Olivier, who can't abide his costar's incessant, costly tardiness, moodiness, and memory lapses on the set.

Olivier met his match with Marilyn. Her Method ways of working up for a scene, with coach Paula Strasberg ( Zoë Wanamaker ) always annoyingly on hand, drove Olivier batty.

Branagh is marvelous at conveying his exasperation. His conceit is that Olivier offstage acted the same as Olivier onstage – as if all of life was a vast playlet. For someone as thoroughly actorly as Olivier, this is probably no exaggeration. I would like to think that the great man himself would have smiled at Branagh's rollicking rendition of tantrums. Grade: B ( Rated R for some language.)

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'My Week With Marilyn' Review: An Entertaining Love Letter To Movies And Celebrity

It's difficult to decide which aspect of My Week With Marilyn is its best asset. The film provides an insider look at movie history, gives interesting insight into legendary personalities, has magnificent performances and a wonderful score. Nope, it's none of those things. The best thing about My Week With Marilyn , Simon Curtis ' delightful snapshot of Hollywood history, is how it gives audience the ultimate wish-fulfillment. We get to experience what it would be like to do something we've all dreamed of: spend a day with the most beautiful and famous person on the planet.

Scheduled for release November 23, it's based on the true diaries of a young man named Colin Clark ( Eddie Redmayne ) who talked his way into a job with Sir Laurence Olivier ( Kenneth Branagh ) and, while shooting the film The Prince and the Showgirl , developed a unique relationship with the most famous woman in the world: Marilyn Monroe ( Michelle Williams ).

My Week With Marilyn screened at the AFI Fest Presented by Audi and you can read more about it below.

In 1956, Marilyn Monroe traveled across the Atlantic to star opposite Laurence Olivier in a film he directed that was eventually called The Prince and the Showgirl . At the same time, a fresh-faced, privileged college graduate named Colin decided he wanted to get into the movie business and gets a job as Olivier's assistant. Like the rest of the world, he's enamored with Monroe and as filming went on, the two developed an intense friendship. Monroe was married to legendary playwright Arthur Miller ( Dougray Scott ) at the time so Clark and Monroe's intentions added even more tension to an already troubled production.

Curtis' film is a well-made, briskly paced love letter to movies and a rumination on celebrity. It explores what it feels like to be famous and to be in the presence of that fame. Though it ultimately settles on a pretty obvious message, the journey to get there is almost too fun for words. Williams' performance is a marvel. She's simultaneously cute and sexy while being confused and scared. Branagh commands the screen as usual and supporting performances by Judi Dench, Julia Ormond, Dominic Cooper, Emma Watson and Toby Jones all help to heighten the movie.

Anyone who loves movies, celebrity or has fantasized about being part of either will find much to like about My Week With Marilyn . It's not an incredibly deep or important film, but it's fantastic and fun none the less. You can't help but want to live in its world.

/Film Rating: 8 out of 10.

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DVD & Streaming

My Week With Marilyn

Drama , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

November 23, 2011
Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe; Eddie Redmayne as Colin Clark; Kenneth Branagh as Sir Laurence Olivier; Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh; Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller; Emma Watson as Lucy; Judi Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike; Zoë Wanamaker as Paula Strasberg; Philip Jackson as Roger Smith; Toby Jones as Arthur Jacobs

Home Release Date

March 13, 2012
Simon Curtis

Distributor

The Weinstein Company

Movie Review

Imagine that you’re a starry-eyed 23-year-old determined to land a career in show business. Imagine further that your determination pays off, that you find yourself as the assistant (read: gopher) to one of the most influential men in entertainment. Finally, imagine that the most iconic actress in the world arrives to shoot a film at your studio and … falls for you.

Sound like a fairy tale? For one week in the summer of 1956, it was reality for young Colin Clark. That was the summer Marilyn Monroe flew to London to film The Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Laurence Olivier. And that was the summer Colin found himself in the most unlikely of roles: confidant and comforter to an incandescent but deeply troubled icon.

It was supposed to be a win-win situation for the principal players. Marilyn, honeymooning with her new (and third) husband, playwright Arthur Miller, hoped to burnish her image as a serious actress by doing a film with Olivier. As for the notoriously persnickety British film and stage fixture, he hoped proximity to Marilyn’s smoldering sensuality might somehow reinvigorate his vintage image.

Alas, things don’t always go as planned.

Marilyn, a mercurial and insecure performer, struggles to deliver even basic lines of dialogue. And with each miscue, Olivier’s contempt for her failures becomes more apparent. Then, when Marilyn discovers notes to a story Miller is working on, she interprets them as a damning critique of her shortcomings—further fanning flames of self-doubt.

On the other end of the spectrum, Marilyn’s sycophantic acting coach, Paula Strasberg, would have her believe she’s the most accomplished actress in history. Marilyn just can’t swallow the line. So, looking for a port in the storm, she strikes up a relationship with Colin, a conscientious young man who’s just trying to ensure that the actress gets where she needs to go with script in hand. And when conflict between Marilyn and Miller drives the playwright back to New York, Marilyn needs somebody to talk with.

And cry with. And skinny-dip with.

In the end, it’s a borderline adulterous fairy tale that inevitably collides with reality, as it most assuredly must—seven days after it began.

Positive Elements

Marilyn Monroe’s tragic life offers a cautionary tale for anyone who’s tempted to believe that fame, money and celebrity are a cure-all. And though this film is set six years before her death, we can clearly see that Marilyn has already wandered some distance down the path of self-destruction.

She’s uncomfortable with the caricatured pin-up role that completely defines her public persona. But when Colin entreats her to let go of that life, she’s unable to do so. The fame and the adulation obviously do not satisfy her. But she’s too addicted to them to just walk away. On a parallel track is this: Despite her super-sexy status, Marilyn still harbors deep insecurities about her worth and her lovability. “I’m not a goddess,” she says. “I just want to be loved like a normal girl.” She laments the fact that when people see the fallibility beneath her pretty facade, they inevitably reject her. “All people ever see is Marilyn Monroe,” she tells Colin. “As soon as they realize I’m not her, they run.”

Drawn to Colin because he’s one of the very few people who doesn’t have an agenda for her, Marilyn intuitively grasps the normal goodness of him simply being there to serve her basic needs as an assistant. His kindness and decency are the qualities that initially attract her attention.

Others confide in Colin as well. Both Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh confess their insecurities to him, again reinforcing the message that fame and fortune do not necessarily equate to even self-satisfaction, much less happiness. Olivier admits, “I thought working with Marilyn would make me feel young again.” It doesn’t. Meanwhile, his wife further drives home the point when she laments, “I’m 43. No one will love me for very much longer.” She fears Olivier will soon leave her for someone younger.

Conversations between Marilyn and Colin also hint at the damage she experienced early in life. Marilyn tells Colin how lucky he is to have a father and a mother who love him—experiences she didn’t have as a child shuffled around a foster care system. She observes, “All little girls should be told how pretty they are, how much their mothers love them.”

A final bright spot is an old actress named Dame Sybil Thorndike who consistently treats Marilyn with benevolence and class, tenderly encouraging her when she feels inadequate.

Spiritual Elements

Marilyn’s acting coach exclaims, “All my life I have prayed for a great actress I could guide.”

Sexual Content

Several scenes involve Colin seeing Marilyn naked. He stands face to face with her after she gets out of a shower, purposely dropping her towel in front of him. (The camera briefly shows her backside.) Her bare rear appears again when she initiates a skinny-dip in a lake. That scene also pictures Colin wearing wet boxer shorts and covering his groin with his hands—an act that prompts Marilyn to mock him for his modesty. Colin also observes Marilyn in a bathtub, covered with suds. (We see a bare leg and a bit of her shoulders.)

Marilyn flirts almost continuously with Colin, but several people advise him against being swept away by her considerable charms. Olivier cautions, “Be careful, boy, she doesn’t need to be rescued.” Colin pays them no mind. He simply can’t resist the temptation of having a relationship with the most famous woman on earth. The two never have sex, though Colin does spend a night in her bed (fully clothed), comforting her after she’s taken too many drugs. They hold hands, kiss and cuddle on several occasions.

Virtually everyone is aware of Marilyn and Colin’s relationship; many are jealous. One of her longtime business associates tells Colin that he and Marilyn had a similar 10-day tryst years before. And Olivier, despite his frequent frustration with her acting, is so infatuated with Marilyn that his wife, Vivien Leigh, instructs Colin to tell her if things go too far between Olivier and Marilyn. But Olivier also makes it (obscenely) known that if sex with Colin will help Marilyn’s acting, then he’s all for it.

Marilyn’s well-documented cleavage and palpable sensuality are frequently on display here. In a press conference full of gawking men, someone asks her if it’s true she sleeps in the nude. She cooingly confirms the rumor. In a screen test, Marilyn playfully wonders if she’s showing too much cleavage. A man responds, “Oh god, no!” Indeed, men continuously objectify her, making crude comments about her breasts and backside. A schoolboy lets loose a randy remark about wanting her to whip him.

Before meeting Marilyn, Colin has kindled a romance with a young woman named Lucy who works in the studio’s costuming department. Lucy is wary of Colin’s advances, but begins to give in—including indulging a make-out session in which she stops him from unbuttoning her blouse. Their romance gets torpedoed once Marilyn attracts Colin’s attention.

Violent Content

None. We see blood on Marilyn’s bed sheets, the result of her suffering through the early stages of a difficult pregnancy.

Crude or Profane Language

Seven f-words. One s-word. Jesus’ name is taken in vain a half-dozen times; God’s is misused two or three times. We hear the British profanity “bloody” four or five times. Other interjections include “a‑‑,” “d‑‑n,” “h‑‑‑” and “b‑‑tard.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

It’s implied more than shown that Marilyn combines alcohol and prescription drugs. We see pill bottles on her nightstand, and her foggy mental state hint at their influence. One tense moment finds her handlers scrambling about outside her locked door, fearful she’s overdosed. Colin climbs through the window to find her woozy, but still living.

Everyone smokes. Olivier even has his own brand of cigarettes. Social drinking (wine, beer and harder beverages) frequently accompanies the tobacco use. We’re shown empty beer bottles around two men who’ve either fallen asleep or passed out on a couch.

Other Negative Elements

Arthur Miller clearly considers his new bride an annoying encumbrance. “I can’t work,” he says. “I can’t think. She’s devouring me.” And Marilyn tells Colin that she knows her third husband already considers their marriage a mistake.

When Olivier comments to his wife about Marilyn’s beauty, Vivien retorts, “I hope she makes your life h‑‑‑.” Marilyn and Colin lie to cover up their relationship.

Many if not most of us have harbored a celebrity crush at some point in our lives. Especially when we’re young, it’s easy to indulge the fantasy of what it would be like to have a relationship with some beautiful, famous person.

My Week With Marilyn , based on Colin Clark’s memoir, effectively puts the hurt on that kind of longing, showing that dreaming and living aren’t the same thing. Reality always intrudes, we’re told.

Actress Michelle Williams, who portrays Marilyn and spent months studying her every nuance, says her main goal in the film was to get at the woman behind the familiar stereotypes. “I grew up with a poster of her in my bedroom,” Williams says in the film’s production notes. “I had always been more interested in the private Marilyn, though, and the unguarded Marilyn—the Marilyn before ‘Marilyn.’ Even as a young girl my primary connection wasn’t with this larger-than-life personality, but with what was going on underneath.”

Screenwriter Adrian Hodges had a similar goal. “Stories about Marilyn feel like an overworked field. Over the years she’s just become this thing, this poster, a set image which has been produced again and again and again.” But he felt differently after reading Clark’s memoirs: “I thought they gave a wonderful insight to the very real side of Marilyn, the Marilyn who was everything that everybody thought she was—scared, insecure, frantic, sometimes impossible—but at the same time vulnerable, sweet, endearing, just a young girl, really. So I thought this screenplay could make her human again.”

He succeeds, with Williams’ help, in fleshing out—quite literally in several brief scenes—the fragile, damaged woman behind the buxom, pin-up archetype who captivated a generation. The result is a sensual, sad and sometimes vulgar peek behind the Hollywood curtain. But it’s also a study of what happens when we’re given the choice between “normalcy” and “fame.” Marilyn didn’t have the will to resist the siren’s song. This film hints at the fact that most of us don’t either.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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My Week With Marilyn review

My Week With Marilyn features a startling turn from Michelle Williams as screen icon Monroe, but does the film have much else to offer? Here’s Luke’s review…

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Following on from the planet-conquering success of The King’s Speech, it was always a fairly safe bet that Hollywood uber-producers the Weinstein brothers would seek to replicate the enormous financial remuneration they’d achieved with similarly frugal fare. The result of their shrewd business sense is My Week With Marilyn, another low-budget Brit semi-biopic with eyes clearly fixed on awards season.

Esteemed television director Simon Curtis and Primeval and Survivor screenwriter Adrian Hodges have adapted Colin Clark’s book, which belatedly described the hitherto untold true story of his tumultuous nine days within the hectic social sphere of Marilyn Monroe – then, arguably, the most famous woman on the planet.

It’s 1956, and the 23-year-old Clark (Eddie Redmayne), eschewing his wealthy father’s wishes, follows his dream to find a way in to the movie business. As must be the way when hailing from aristocratic stock, Colin has little trouble finding work, quickly landing a job at Sir Lawrence Olivier’s prestigious production company as third assistant director of his upcoming picture.

The 50 year-old Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), in a deliberate effort to rejuvenate his career, has wooed Monroe (a startlingly uncanny Michelle Williams) across the pond to direct and star alongside her in his big-screen adaptation of The Prince And The Showgirl. The exuberance and cinematic joie de vivre that came so effortlessly in his youth long depleted, Olivier hopes Monroe – through some form of youthful osmosis – will reinvigorate his passion and cinematic standing.

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He also desires to sleep with her, yet his plans have been somewhat scuppered by Monroe’s recent high-profile marriage to famous playwright Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott).

Marilyn touches down in Blighty amidst a barrage of frenzied media coverage. Hacks and paparazzi swarm avariciously, yet Marilyn is the consummate professional in her dealings with them, batting their intrusions away with easy wit and playfully suggestive charm. To Olivier’s increasing consternation, this same level of professional conduct doesn’t extend to her work.

He hoped to snuggle her within the chummy bosom and endless “Yes, daaahling”s of the British acting fraternity, yet Monroe is a student of Stanislavsky’s method – a way of working poles apart from Olivier’s classical training – and insists on Zoë Wannamaker’s overbearing, maternal acting coach being present at all times, effectively co-directing her.

That this drives Olivier to distraction is no surprise, yet the fact that – in her increased isolation from her classically trained co-star – she would find companionship with Clark, the production’s ‘gopher’ (‘go for this’ and ‘go for that’: general film set dogsbody) is. None are more star struck than he, yet he is honest with her, and she finds this refreshing enough to include him in dealings at levels high above his modest station.

Crippled by crises of confidence, a dependence on drink and pills and constant exposure to her sycophantic entourage, she is not the altogether image of perfection her onscreen persona suggests. Williams’ Monroe spouts all the ‘gee’s and ‘phooey’s you would expect, yet this multifaceted Monroe oscillates between wide-eyed childlike wonder, lens-conditioned sexuality and fragile, melancholic emotional turmoil.

It really is a remarkable turn from Williams, who perfectly echoes Monroe’s ability to flip from private vulnerability to public invulnerability with the flick of an internal switch: one minute a megastar, the next a servile pawn in everyone else’s designs.

The film is not a miserable dissection of fame, however. The introspective moments are far outweighed by the lighter ones, the majority of which come at the hands of Branagh’s increasingly Meldrewian outrage. Branagh’s Olivier (complete with his balletically inflected lilt) gets the majority of the film’s best lines: coarse zingers, rich in fruity and rambunctious stiff-upper-lipped profanity.

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This Olivier is perhaps presented more favourably than the real one was in reality (Olivier famously said of Marilyn, many years after her death, “She was a bitch…”), yet Branagh’s inch-perfect delivery almost single-handedly carries the entire comedic side of the film.

The affection for the period and the characters that occupy it is forever apparent. This idealised England that doesn’t really exist anymore: green grassland; vibrant colour; bicycles with baskets; houses with thatched roofs; Norman Wisdom – all present and rose-tinted beneath a knee-slapping 50s big-band accompaniment.

The supporting cast, full of big names, portrays the folk of the time as amiable, edgeless types too. Judi Dench is positively huggable as Dame Sybil Thorndyke, Julia Ormond is endlessly patient as Olivier’s wife Vivien Leigh, while Toby Jones and Philip Jackson are perfectly and symmetrically avuncular.

Redmayne’s Clark is a likeable, naive lead. His growing devotion to Monroe comes at a price, and he is forced to choose between this and a burgeoning romance with wardrobe assistant Lucy (Emma Watson) while walking the perilous professional tightrope of having allegiances to two separate factions within the production.

Yet Monroe herself never quite strays far enough away from the Aphrodite-lite image of her we all have. We see her break down, but not unravel, and she touches briefly on her past yet never reveals enough backstory to make us invest completely in her. Yes, the film is based on Clark’s account, but for the sake of the film, Monroe’s character could have done with a little more peeling back. The film is left with an air of inescapable tweeness, which is entirely watchable if a little inconsequential.

It does occasionally become as farcical as the film-within-a-film whose production we are witnessing, and while the trailer might have you believing this is a dissection of Monroe’s fame and flawed character, the reality is that it’s a whimsical fish-out-of-water comedy with sufficient dramatic excursions to pull it back down to a critically favourable performance piece.

Were it not a true story, it would be difficult to believe it was possible for someone like Clark to go from anonymity to the social circles of superstars within a matter of days, yet it happened, and as such, this is an adequately interesting story to warrant its telling.

Yet one feels that there are more interesting tales to be told about Monroe: her string of famous partners, her spiralling drink and drug abuse (which is present here, albeit without any real resolution), and her untimely death.

There are some great performances, with Michelle Williams in particular likely to receive plaudits aplenty, yet it’s all too harmless to resonate on any levels besides the superficial entertainment value it provides so admirably. My Week With Marilyn is therefore a pleasant and diverting comedic romp, but little more. It’s a couple of hours with a group of colourful characters it is in no way a chore to be in the company of.

Luke Holland

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My week with marilyn, common sense media reviewers.

Appealing Monroe drama has strong language, some sexuality.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie's main message is that you don't

The film is based on Colin Clark's memoirs and

A man catches a glimpse of a woman as she's ge

Words including "f--k," "s--t,&quot

No heavy-handed label-dropping, but there's an

Plenty of period-accurate smoking and drinking. Ma

Positive Messages

The movie's main message is that you don't always need to look for adventure; sometimes, it finds you. All you need to do is let yourself experience it.

Positive Role Models

The film is based on Colin Clark's memoirs and is told from his point of view. This helps make him a sympathetic figure, one who's able to look past Marilyn's blinding fame and beauty and connect with the person underneath the facade. An older actress treats Marilyn with kindness and patience and encourages everyone else to do so, too. Monroe herself is portrayed as a mix of vulnerability, sadness and kindness, but well aware of her power.

Violence & Scariness

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A man catches a glimpse of a woman as she's getting out of the shower (viewers see her naked from behind). She's also seen, her backside visible, walking into a lake to go skinny-dipping. She's married but kisses a man who's not her husband. Some references to married people having affairs.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Words including "f--k," "s--t," "t-ts," "hell," "damn," and "ass" are used several times. Also "for God's sake," etc. as exclamations.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

No heavy-handed label-dropping, but there's an awareness of how celebrities are commodified.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Plenty of period-accurate smoking and drinking. Marilyn is also shown pill-popping (and her associates discuss needing to give her pills).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this engrossing movie based on the memoirs of writer-director Colin Clark isn't so much a biopic as a window into a week of Marilyn Monroe's life as interpreted by Clark. It's not a salacious account, but there are hints at how the icon traded on her sexuality (complete with a couple of glimpses of Monroe, as played by Michelle Williams , naked from behind). You can also expect plenty of smoking, cocktail drinking, and swearing (including "f--k" and "s--t"). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (3)
Kids say (5)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Great biography film. Suitable for teens 15+

What's the story.

In the summer of 1956, actress Marilyn Monroe ( Michelle Williams ) flew to England to film a movie with iconic British thespian Sir Laurence Olivier ( Kenneth Branagh ). The film was meant to cement Olivier's stature as the best actor of his generation in a totally different medium -- he was the master of the stage, not the screen -- and Monroe as an actress of substance, not just one to be appreciated for her physical gifts. But by many accounts, it was a difficult shoot. Monroe, newly married to playwright Arthur Miller, was apparently already sensing estrangement in her relationship; she was also anxious about doing well and relied heavily on her acting coach for support. Into the mix comes Colin Clark ( Eddie Redmayne ), on whose memoirs MY WEEK WITH MARILYN is based. Decades before becoming known as a director and writer, the aristocratic Clark was just beginning his career in the movies. And what a start it was, spending a week becoming Monroe's confidante and suitor.

Is It Any Good?

Redmayne is a chameleon of an actor, sometimes gritty, sometimes noble. Here he's a naif of sorts -- albeit one with noble lineage -- who finds himself struck by the phenomenon that is Marilyn Monroe. It's Redmayne's ability to come across as both in awe and yet completely in touch with Monroe's vulnerability that endears him here and makes him completely believable as Clark. It must help to have the seasoned Branagh and Dame Judi Dench to work with -- and, even more impressively, Williams, who has found a way to become a Marilyn who still holds a mystery, despite pop culture's endless examination of the actress and her life. What Williams manages to really sell is Monroe's simultaneous innocence and canniness -- a major feat.

The screenplay errs on the side of thin; we don't really get to know (or understand) Clark or his motivations for certain choices. At times, you can't help but wonder whether the vantage point from which you're watching things unfold is ever going to be questioned, and the film often seems in awe of Marilyn when we long to really get to know her. But, then again, can that be helped? Wasn't that precisely the hold the actress had on everyone in her orbit?

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why Marilyn Monroe continues to be an icon. What is her lasting appeal? Can she be considered a role model?

Does Monroe seem aware of her magic in this movie? Does the film advance her status as an icon or demystify her in any way? How?

Do you think it's necessary for movies set in the 1950s to include lots of smoking and drinking? Why or why not?

Movie Details

In theaters : November 23, 2011
On DVD or streaming : March 13, 2012
Cast : Eddie Redmayne , Kenneth Branagh , Michelle Williams
Director : Simon Curtis
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
Studio : Weinstein Co.
Genre : Drama
Run time : 99 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : some language
Last updated : October 8, 2022

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My Week with Marilyn (2011)

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My Week with Marilyn

Directed by Simon Curtis • 2011 • United Kingdom, United States Starring Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne

Michelle Williams delivers a luminous, fully embodied performance as Marilyn Monroe in this captivating behind-the-scenes portrait that captures both her legendary star power and her private vulnerability. Based on a true story, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN takes us inside the filming of Laurence Olivier’s THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL. As tensions mount on set, young production assistant Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) finds himself drawn into the Hollywood bombshell’s inner world over the course of a life-changing week in the British countryside in which he is granted rare access to the complex person behind the glamorous facade.

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Michelle Williams delivers a luminous, fully embodied performance as Marilyn Monroe in this captivating behind-the-scenes portrait that captures both her legendary star pow...

My Week with Marilyn (United Kingdom/United States, 2011)

At first glance, My Week with Marilyn might seem like a salacious behind-the-scenes look at a mostly forgotten (yet high profile at the time) movie that had its share of off-camera drama. However, a closer examination of the film reveals an incomplete character study of icon-in-the-making Marilyn Monroe. Although still six years away from her 1962 death-by-overdose when she traveled to England to make The Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Laurence Olivier, Marilyn displayed many of the characteristics that would later poison her career and personal life. My Week with Marilyn chronicles the difficult process of getting the film in the can while exploring the enigma that was Marilyn Monroe at the height of her fame.

Adrian Hodges' screenplay is based on two books written by Colin Clark, who was the "third assistant to the director" on The Prince and the Showgirl . It wasn't until the 1990s that Clark, who died in 2002, published the accounts of his time spent with Marilyn Monroe. His claims of a chaste love affair ring true and his portrait of the actress meshes with other accounts from the era. My Week with Marilyn is a relatively accurate encapsulation of Clark's experiences. However, although the narrative is presented from his point-of-view, this isn't his story - he seems like a minor satellite orbiting a blazing star.

The events transpire during the summer of 1956. At the time, Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) is among the royalty of British cinema and widely viewed as one of the best actors in the world. Monroe (Michelle Williams) is arguably the most famous movie star, but she is trying to shed her sexpot image and be taken seriously. The marriage of these two in a romantic comedy, The Prince and the Showgirl , is viewed as a can't-miss proposition. Almost from the beginning, however, Monroe's inconsistency in front of the camera and her eccentricities away from it drive director Olivier to distraction. Although newly married to playwright Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), Marilyn is unhappy, and Olivier's criticisms of her make her skittish. She is frequently late to the set and often altogether absent due to illness, alcohol, or pills. She has three advocates outside of Miller: fellow actress Dame Sybil Thorndike (Judi Dench), who sympathizes with her plight; companion Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wanamaker), who helps with her "method acting"; and Clark (Eddie Redmayne), who is kind and non-judgmental. For a week after Miller leaves for some peace and quiet, Clark becomes Marilyn's confidante. To her, he is a friendly port in a storm. To him, she is his first love.

The primary criticism leveled against Michelle Williams is that she doesn't look "enough" like Marilyn Monroe. Admittedly, Williams is not a dead ringer for the '50s icon, but the strength of her performance is more than sufficient to wipe away physical dissimilarities. Williams brings Marilyn to life in all her permutations: little-girl-lost Norma Jean; sexy, kittenish Marilyn Monroe; and the confused woman trapped in between. There's a remarkable scene in which Monroe, on a "field trip" with Clark, asks him if she should "turn it on." Moments later, the somewhat timid woman is replaced by a saucy, pouting, entirely confident starlet. My Week with Marilyn is filled with moments like this when we get a sense that, for Monroe, although fame was a curse, it was something she could not live without.

There is rich irony in the casting of Kenneth Branagh as Olivier. For much of his professional career (at least since he made Henry V more than two decades ago), Branagh has been compared to Olivier, so it's fitting that he play the actor. The character is thinly-written - Olivier is third fiddle to Monroe and Clark - so Branagh opts more for mimicry than attempting to develop a three-dimensional personality. It works well enough in the context of what My Week with Marilyn requires. Olivier comes across as a tireless perfectionist, impatient, prone to introspective lapses, and a womanizer. Like everyone else, he is in awe of Marilyn. Unlike everyone else, he would like to strangle her.

Eddie Redmayne, who has bounced back and forth between film and television in England, is probably the least known member of a cast that includes Williams, Branagh, Judi Dench, Emma Watson (an underwritten role as Clark's would-be "normal" girlfriend), and Derek Jacobi (in a cameo), but he holds his own. His portrayal of Clark is gentle and unforced. On those occasions when he fades into the background, it's by design. For Marilyn to shine, Clark cannot be too forceful, and Redmayne understands this.

Simon Curtis, a veteran TV director making the leap to the big screen, has fashioned a production that should have broad appeal. It's one of the best recent character studies of Monroe, especially in the way it details the beginnings of behavior that would lead to the ruin of her career and her death. It offers a beguiling, factually-based look at the difficulties faced in making movies with stars during the '50s. As such, it should intrigue those who love old movies and those who are arrested by tabloid stories. And it provides a sweet love story - although this is by far its weakest aspect. The unpretentious, easy-to-digest style and short running length (a shade over 90 minutes), when coupled with strong acting (especially on Williams' part), make My Week with Marilyn a pleasant end-of-the-year diversion.

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Movie Review: My Week With Marilyn (2011)

Charlie Juhl
Movie Reviews
3 responses
--> December 2, 2011

The vast majority of film characters who are addicted to pills and alcohol should not be the main characters in movie scripts. These characters are frequently one dimensional and are only required to slur words, stumble over steps, and make a nuisance of themselves. There are exceptions (Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas ) as there are to any rule of thumb, but usually one does not want to rest a movie on a pill-head’s shoulders.

My Week with Marilyn does not rely on Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) as the central character, but she is not just a supporting role either. The star of the movie with ‘Marilyn’ in the title is actually Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), the young third assistant director on Sir Laurence Olivier’s production of The Prince and the Showgirl . Through amusing perseverance, Colin has wormed his way into his first real job and onto his first real movie set. He fetches coffee, shuffles script copies, and routinely asks the talent what he can do to make them more comfortable.

The script chose to follow Colin’s one week on the set with Marilyn Monroe and their brief flirtation/affair which itself is memorialized in his autobiography devoted to that week. However, through a few factors which may not be apparent from the script’s pages, neither Colin nor Marilyn is the most interesting character in the movie. This credit belongs solely to Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh). It is 1956 and Olivier confides to Colin that he no longer feels young and has decided to cast Marilyn in his film to recapture some of his lost youth and maybe even engage in his own affair with her.

Olivier and Branagh have a lot in common. They are Shakespeare addicts, are widely acknowledged to be seminal actors in their respective generations, and I like to think that if their births were reversed, it would be Olivier playing Branagh in a film. Branagh gives a truly convincing performance as an aging Olivier who begins amused with Marilyn’s quirks before settling with disgust at her pathetic work ethic and ridiculous attempt to define herself as a true acting talent.

On set, Marilyn was never on time, held up the rest of the cast for hours, was spoon fed her lines and delivery method from her acting coach Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wanamaker), and sometimes stayed in bed for an entire day because of her pill and alcohol problems. The film blames these problems both on Paula and Marilyn’s agent Milton Greene (Dominic Cooper) as her sycophantic pill-pushers. Colin brushes aside his own worries about Marilyn’s physical and mental health because he has severe love blinders on. When a person is so smitten and in lust as Colin is, the object of their desire can do no wrong.

Aside from Michelle Williams, the supporting cast is quite strong. Co-starring with Marilyn is Dame Sybil Thorndike (Dame Judi Dench) who appears just as smitten as Colin sometimes and Olivier’s wife Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond) gives a brief but telling performance. Dominic Cooper plays a standard high-tension agent protective of his star and makes me question why he still shows up in such minor roles after his fantastic turn as Uday Hussein in this year’s The Devil’s Double .

Most of the critical response to My Week with Marilyn focuses on Michelle Williams and fawns about her most certain Oscar nomination. I disagree. Williams looks nothing like Monroe and I was painfully aware of the fake blonde wig and fake teeth. For most of the movie, and especially in the first half, I was watching Michelle Williams play Marilyn Monroe instead of forgetting that and just watching Marilyn. Director Simon Curtis made a mistake in casting a well known actress to play Marilyn; he would have been much better off casting an unknown actress which would have decreased the inevitable distraction.

Nonetheless, I encourage you to take the time to see My Week with Marilyn for the critically overlooked Branagh performance as Olivier and because overall it is an enjoyable movie. Just try and look past the Williams performance . . .

I like movies and they like me right back. You can find out how much by visiting my personal site Citizen Charlie .

Movie Review: The Gatekeepers (2012) Movie Review: Beautiful Creatures (2013) Movie Review: Warm Bodies (2013) Movie Review: Parker (2013) Movie Review: Mama (2013) Movie Review: 5 Broken Cameras (2011) Movie Review: Gangster Squad (2013)

'Movie Review: My Week With Marilyn (2011)' have 3 comments

December 3, 2011 @ 6:37 am Seth

Looks like a made for Hallmark tele flick to me. Probably won’t watch it when it shows up there either.

December 3, 2011 @ 9:16 am Doggert

Who gives a shit about Marilyn Monroe? Not me. Pass.

January 28, 2012 @ 5:28 pm Neil

Branagh gives a truely outstanding performance in this film, playing the part of Sir Laurence Olivier with great depth and clarity. Michelle Williams is also fab as Marilyn. One to watch.

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My Week with Marilyn movie review (2011)
By some tantalizing alchemy, Marilyn Monroe imprinted an idea in the minds of much of the human race around 1950, and for many, that idea is still there. In the early 1950s, my friends and I required only one word to express it: marilynmonroe. It wasn't a name. It was a summation of all we yearned and guessed about some kind of womanly ideal. Sex didn't seem to have much to do with it. It was ...
My Week With Marilyn
Anna Smith metro.co.uk My Week With Marilyn is a compelling look at Marilyn Monroe's insecurities - but Michelle Williams doesn't fully convince as the film legend. Aug 24, 2018 Full Review Lisa ...
'My Week With Marilyn,' With Michelle Williams
My Week With Marilyn. Directed by Simon Curtis. Biography, Drama. R. 1h 39m. By Manohla Dargis. Nov. 22, 2011. In 1976, the year that Marilyn Monroe would have turned 50, Larry McMurtry wrote that ...
My Week With Marilyn
My Week With Marilyn is a compelling look at Marilyn Monroe's insecurities - but Michelle Williams doesn't fully convince as the film legend. Full Review | Aug 24, 2018.
My Week With Marilyn: Film Review
By David Rooney. October 9, 2011 5:26pm. Weinstein Co. NEW YORK - The luminous Michelle Williams gives a layered performance that goes beyond impersonation in My Week With Marilyn. Playing both ...
My Week With Marilyn
MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 101 MIN. With: Marilyn Monroe - Michelle Williams Colin Clark - Eddie Redmayne Laurence Olivier - Kenneth Branagh Milton Greene - Dominic Cooper Vivien Leigh - Julia ...
My Week With Marilyn
My Week With Marilyn - review. This article is more than 12 years old. ... I n 1956, Marilyn Monroe came to Britain to make a movie at Pinewood Studios with Laurence Olivier. This was the tense ...
My Week With Marilyn Review
The fact-based My Week With Marilyn recounts young Colin Clark's (Eddie Redmayne) memories of the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, starring the industry's top movie star, sexpot Marilyn ...
My Week with Marilyn Review
My Week With Marilyn manages to give us a glimpse of Marilyn Monroe's unique allure once more, with a spellbinding performance by Michelle Williams, and a story with the double-edged strength to ...
My Week with Marilyn (2011)
My Week with Marilyn: Directed by Simon Curtis. With Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Julia Ormond, Kenneth Branagh. Colin Clark, an employee of Sir Laurence Olivier, documents the tense interactions between Olivier and Marilyn Monroe during the production of The Prince and the Showgirl (1957).
My Week With Marilyn Review
Release Date: 24 Nov 2011. Running Time: 98 minutes. Certificate: 15. Original Title: My Week With Marilyn. The 'my week' chronicler in Simon Curtis' entertaining 'no business like show ...
My Week With Marilyn: movie review
Michelle Williams captures Marilyn Monroe's fragility and guile, but not her aura - a tall order - in 'My Week With Marilyn.'
'My Week With Marilyn' Review: An Entertaining Love Letter To Movies
Scheduled for release November 23, it's based on the true diaries of a young man named Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) who talked his way into a job with Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and ...
My Week With Marilyn
Marilyn's well-documented cleavage and palpable sensuality are frequently on display here. In a press conference full of gawking men, someone asks her if it's true she sleeps in the nude. She cooingly confirms the rumor. In a screen test, Marilyn playfully wonders if she's showing too much cleavage.
My Week with Marilyn
My Week with Marilyn is a 2011 biographical drama film directed by Simon Curtis and written by Adrian Hodges.It stars Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Dominic Cooper, Julia Ormond, Emma Watson, and Judi Dench.Based on two books by Colin Clark, it depicts the making of the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl, which starred Marilyn Monroe (Williams) and Laurence Olivier ...
My Week with Marilyn
In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark, just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of 'The Prince and the Showgirl'. The film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Aurthur Miller. Nearly 40 years on, his diary account ...
My Week With Marilyn review
It's 1956, and the 23-year-old Clark (Eddie Redmayne), eschewing his wealthy father's wishes, follows his dream to find a way in to the movie business.
My Week With Marilyn Movie Review
December 24, 2011. age 15+. Great biography film. Suitable for teens 15+. This movie is about a short-term relationship between Colin Clark and Marilyn Monroe who has their downs and turn ups. There is some strong vulgar language in the film, such as multiple uses of the f--k, s--t, and some religious profanities.
My Week with Marilyn (2011)
Marilyn Monroe, the quintessential blonde bombshell, came to Pinewood Studios in 1956 to shoot 'The Prince and the Showgirl', a light comedy directed by and starring Laurence Olivier. Colin Clark, the third assistant director on the film, was the lucky 23-year-old who got to spend a week with her. 'My Week with Marilyn' cinematises his diary.
My Week with Marilyn
Directed by Simon Curtis • 2011 • United Kingdom, United States Starring Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne Michelle Williams delivers a luminous, fully embodied performance as Marilyn Monroe in this captivating behind-the-scenes portrait that captures both her legendary star power and her private vulnerability. Based on a true story, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN takes us inside ...
My Week with Marilyn
A movie review by James Berardinelli. At first glance, My Week with Marilyn might seem like a salacious behind-the-scenes look at a mostly forgotten (yet high profile at the time) movie that had its share of off-camera drama. However, a closer examination of the film reveals an incomplete character study of icon-in-the-making Marilyn Monroe.
Movie Review: My Week With Marilyn (2011)
My Week with Marilyn does not rely on Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) as the central character, but she is not just a supporting role either. The star of the movie with 'Marilyn' in the title is actually Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), the young third assistant director on Sir Laurence Olivier's production of The Prince and the Showgirl .
My Week With Marilyn Movie Review: Beyond The Trailer
My Week With Marilyn Movie Review. Beyond The Trailer host Grace Randolph gives you the low-down on My Week With Marilyn starring Michelle Williams, Kenneth...

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