My Week With Marilyn Review

Title: My Week With Marilyn

Year: 2011

Director: Simon Curtis

Main Actors: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, and Kenneth Branagh

My Week With Marilyn is the story of Marilyn Monroe shooting the movie, The Prince and the Showgirl.  The movie is based upon the diary of Colin Clark, an assistant to Sir Laurence Olivier.  This movie shows how people take advantage of those who are a “star”, but it also shows how even unknowingly the “star” can hurt people and leave them in her wake.

Marilyn Monroe was truly an amazing person, except all that people see is the seductive woman who smiles and laughs.  However, behind that face was a past that haunted her and people who truly did not care.  Marilyn Monroe was a talented, but fragile, scared, and lonely person.   She, like many other famous people, both then and now, took many pills.  She took pills for this and pills for that; all to make it through the day.  She needed others for strength; in fact, she relied on others to build her up.    People told her what she wanted to hear; they made concessions for her only because they wanted her to do what they wanted. 

However, people soon realized that Marilyn was not all that she seemed on face value.   She was often not ready when she got on set or needed her acting coach, Paula, who was more of a motivational coach, to tell her that she was amazing and beautiful, but the motivation behind the compliments was not pure.   The people, who were with her, such as her acting coach and her business partner, only saw her as their meal ticket.  Marilyn Monroe said (it’s not in the movie) “Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.” They only cared that she did the job and became an icon because it would mean they were set for life.  It did not matter to them how she truly felt or what was going on, as long as they could convince her to do what was asked.

 This problem still exists today.   People still take advantage of people who are destined for greatness.  They are with them not because they care or want to help.  They are there only to feed their own self-interests.  These leeches will put them on pills for everything if they think it will help.  That is what happened to Marilyn Monroe.  She was haunted by her past and surrounded by people who could not help her with what she was going through.  “People always see Marilyn Monroe. As soon as they realize I am not her they run.”

The Director of The Prince and the Showgirl, Sir Lawrence Olivier, wanted Marilyn Monroe in his movie because he was hoping that Marilyn would make him young again, revitalize him.  But she cannot do that for other people.  In the end, she was the light of the finished product, yet working with her did not make him young again as he had hoped.

On the other hand, the people who truly cared about Marilyn Monroe got hurt.  The assistant, Colin Clark, fell in love with Marilyn.  He was with her through the long nights, but it was not for the money, but because he loved her.  “She breaks hearts” he was told “She will break yours.”  In the end, whether it was intentional or not, Colin Clark got his heart broken and it was because he truly cared about her and not just her status or money.  In the end, she went home to Arthur Miller.  Colin was warned many times, but he accepted Marilyn for who she was, and fell.

This movie showed the abuses many celebrities take. Marilyn Monroe was a person who needed another’s strength because hers was not enough and people leeched off that.  They took advantage of her at every turn, not caring what happened to her.   They gave her pills, which is a story that is heard about Judy Garland and Michael Jackson.  In the end, each needed pills for everything and they all had people telling them what they wanted to hear.  Marilyn Monroe was talented, but she was not trained, rather she was natural.    She was Marilyn Monroe, but when you got that, you got all the baggage of a real person that came with it.  That is the part no one cared about.