My Week with Marilyn

This film is quite good, though sorely misnamed. The entire movie does not take place within a week's time, instead it covers the entirely of shooting time the film The Prince and the Showgirl took, which must have been several months. The week is the time when runner Colin Clive grew close to the superstar, Marilyn Monroe, and then he wrote two memiors based on his experience, milking it for all it was worth. Eddie Redmayne (Tony winner for Red) is great as the dewey-eyed Colin, eager to make his career in movies and just starstruck to be working with both Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe. Though the plot is fairly simple, it is the characters that bring this movie to life. Michelle Williams is senstational as Marilyn, capturing every single detail of the essence that only Marilyn had, down to the breathy voice. Kenneth Branaugh also does justice to the fairly similar Shakespearan actor and director Laurence Olivier. Judi Dench is great as the legendary actress portraying Olivier's mother in the film. Emma Watson is fine in her terribly small role as the wardrobe girl on the film. She is simply deprived of screen time though her role is an interesting one, as the girl who falls in love with Colin only to be tossed aside for Marilyn.
Marilyn is such a complex woman, both childish and insecure as well as confident and polished, as well as being a great comedic actress. But thanks to her awful childhood and her devastation in love and childbearing (she suffers a miscarriage toward the end of the film, but this whole situation was handled rather poorly) along with being fawned over by the public, Marilyn is a fragile woman just waiting to break. The break came much too soon, in 1962 when she was just 36. Her current husband, Arthur Miller, the famous playwright, portrayed in the film by Dougray Scott and her acting coach Paula Strasberg, Zoe Wanamaker do little to help her in the long-term run. But on the screen, Marilyn is enchanting, just as Williams is. Grade: A-