My Week With Marilyn!!!

In the year 1957, Sir Laurence Olivier (portrayed by Kenneth Branagh) began directing and acting in a film originally entitled, ‘The Sleeping Prince.’ A young 23 year old film student, Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), was determined to have some part in Olivier’s films. After days of not giving up, Olivier granted him the position of third assistant to the director. As his days on set began, he grew more and more fascinated and excited of what to come. ‘My Week with Marilyn’ focuses on the time Clark spent with the ever so famous Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) during the shoot of the film later called, ‘The Prince and the Showgirl.’

‘My Week with Marilyn’ was beautiful. Michelle Williams gives a remarkable performance, which just recently garnered a Golden Globe award for Best Actress and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She portrays Marilyn Monroe as a beautiful, vulnerable, troubled woman who just wants to be loved and adored. She sings, dances and was great at ‘being her.’ The acting in this film was great. Not only was Williams brilliant as Monroe, but Branagh was wonderful as Olivier and even garnered an Academy Award nod for Best Actor. He portrayed Olivier as a dedicated actor who cared deeply about creating beautiful films. But when he films with Marilyn his frustrations grew when she wasn’t on time, or didn’t give every take her all. Redmayne portrays Colin as a sweet, naïve young man that is thrown into the extravagant and sometimes troublesome life of Marilyn Monroe. But, Colin handles it all with confidence and grace. He takes care of her well and even has her calling for him before the week is up.

The story of this film is interesting and captivating. The film is based off a true story written by the real Colin Clark. My Week with Marilyn truly shows how fame and fortune doesn’t exactly equal happiness. Marilyn was lost, she was scared. She was flown to London to shoot a film that she didn’t quite understand and her constant thought was that she wasn’t ever good enough. To think that the beautiful, talented actress that won the hearts of audiences all over the world could be so negative about herself is hard to understand, but makes it easy to see that she was real, she was human. My Week with Marilyn depicts Marilyn for not being the best person to work with. She is constantly late or not showing up for work at all. She was an emotional wreck and relied heavily on others to make her happy or feel better and this film dives deep into the issues she had for just that one week. It was exhausting at times to watch this film because of how tiresome she grew with how unhappy she truly was.

I strong recommend My Week with Marilyn to anyone who enjoys Marilyn Monroe, films within films and a movie that showcases that sometimes having it all is still not nearly enough.