ButtNugget’s review published on Letterboxd:
Friendly reminder: Michelle Williams is the best American actress working today. Nobody comes close; she is a fucking godsend to contemporary cinema and we are very lucky to have her with us, gracing the silver screen on a timely basis. With that said, I turn my thoughts to My Week with Marilyn, Simon Curtis’ prosaic yet sprightly biopic of legendary Hollywood movie star Marilyn Monroe focusing on her 1957 collaboration with Shakespearean thespian-cum-filmmaker Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl. It’s based on the memoirs of Colin Clark, Olivier’s third assistant director at the time who had a fleeting, wistful fling with the screen goddess during her stay in Britain. I often found myself questioning the veracity of some particular scenes, wondering how these truly played out in real life. Nevertheless, the film kept me entertained and intrigued, which is surprising considering how “Oscar Bait” is written all over it. That’s the most important thing anyway and I actually came out liking it in the end.
This is as much a film about Monroe as it is of Clark. It’s a story of an avid filmgoing twenty-three year old nobody who gets to play cutesy (and then some!) with the most desired woman in the world at her peak for one whole week, pretty much a fantasy come true of any red-blooded male back in the days. The plot is deliberately straightforward yet never fluffy, unexpectedly gushing with poignancy at key moments. I was totally anticipating an unevenly acted movie with Williams towering over everyone, but that’s not the case since the acting of the rest of the cast is generally good. Eddie Redmayne is decent as Clark, his starstruck eyes eternally glued to William’s Monroe much to the chagrin of his girlfriend played by poor Emma Watson. The honor of second best acting goes to Kenneth Branagh who is born to be Olivier’s doppelgänger and is a complete riot, especially whenever he is boiling over Monroe’s constant failings. The film repeatedly examines Monroe’s fear and embarrassment of her blunders on set, interestingly giving way to this method acting vs traditional acting story arc. Unfortunately, the narrative soon resorts to the cliche of the perils of stardom. It doesn’t have anything new to say about the topic but hey, at least there’s Williams and she makes everything look like a hundred bucks.
Supposed if it was up to me to cast Monroe without having any knowledge of this film’s existence, then I would’ve probably chosen Christina Hendricks who looks and sounds the part for sure. This movie goes to show that perfect mimicry is nonsense and a biopic merely needs significant acting chops to sell the portrayal well. As Monroe, Williams eschews caricature and embraces refinement, acting like a real person instead of a screen legend, nuanced gestures and all. Williams has a neat tendency of relying on her facial expressions and body language to speak volumes without uttering a single word. She is stunning and transfixing in those dailies that Clark and Olivier watch over at the end of a shoot. Williams herself may never reach the superstardom level of Monroe as an actress, but in my eyes she’s already up there shining in the sky.
Hackneyed biopic tropes be damned, My Week with Marilyn is definitely worth one’s time. It’s fun and moving, a surefire treat for fans of classical Hollywood cinema.