Thoughts & Rambles: My Week with Marilyn

My Week with Marilyn is based off Colin Clark’s books during his time being the 3rd assistant director of the movie “the Prince and the Showgirl” and had allegedly a relationship with Marilyn Monroe, thus one can assume how much of a romanced version this is of Clark’s time with Monroe and how much of it’s true. I ultimately simply feel this man was in so hopelessly in love with her, losing her pretty much broke his heart and the way he dealt with that was writing these novels and dedicating his love to filmography which he also loved.


Colin Clark (played by Eddie Redmayne) is from a rich family who gets incredibly lucky with his 1st movie project involving Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) and the iconic British director-producer-actor Sir Laurence Oliver (Kenneth Branagh) and the movie pretty much focuses on how hopelessly annoying Marilyn Monroe was for the entire process of the film making, but no matter how painfully annoying she was, how hopelessly troubled and drug addicted, people still swooned over her due to what they called: her natural talent.


My problem with this film and why I find it ultimately very average is the fact I didn’t get to care for any of these characters whatsoever. Colin starts dating a girl named Lucy (Emma Watson) but more or less ignores her because he is swooned over by Monroe, Monroe is a helpless troubled person who is just annoying everyone and giving so much trouble for Colin, who of course goes all the trouble into desperately trying to win her over because he’s in love. Even with the small hints of Monroe’s sad background I just can’t find any reason to care for her character’s story, it also has to do with the two “family” members of Monroe constantly being there, her acting trainer and photographer who just kept kissing her ass and giving her, her drugs. I guess I felt like Laurence Oliver who was just trying to get a good movie done and rise up in fame like Monroe herself, but all of these actors did a superb job, so it’s not the acting I’m nitpicking about, it’s the structure of the story and me finding no reason to care for either protagonist of the film.

So the final thoughts would be: Terrific acting from Kenneth Branagh & Michelle Williams, the setting is believable with its 1957 era from costumes to settings and so forth, but what makes this movie just fairly average is the way the story represents Colin Clark and Marilyn Monroe, if the audience doesn’t get a connection to the characters, he/she won’t care or remember the movie for long.
In a word: Meh