My Week With Marilyn

We went to see the chilling true story Snowtown, but annoyingly it has ended its run yesterday and the cinema website obviously didn’t update to ‘today’ after midnight, but sometimes towards morning. As we’re seeing Take Shelter tomorrow, we opted for another (purportedly) true story – My Week With Marilyn. Which I was happy to see mostly for lovely Emma Watson, who had a minor role she was billed fairly highly for.

It’s pretty fanciful, and paints its characters in a very one-dimensional way, Marilyn aside. Telling the story of a young posh ex-Etonian who gets involved with showbiz through his family’s connections, manages to get on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, and through being generally sweet and harmless captures the attention of Monroe herself and begins an illicit affair.

The trouble is, nobody at all is likeable here. Colin, the protagonist, is awkward and dull – and though he’s a black sheep of sorts, nepotism is never going to endear a young man to an audience, and nor does it give him much depth. He shuts out the fact he’s just being used a little too much, and after all he cheats on his girlfriend (the gorgeous Emma Watson, who I certainly wouldn’t have left for Monroe – in fact, I think they ought to have cast someone plainer) with a woman he knows to be married already, which for all her iconic status is not a very romantic tale. Monroe herself is a whole spectrum of things – wide-eyed and winsome ingénue, clear-headed seductress, drug-frazzled trainwreck, spoilt idiotic brat and savvy businesswoman…but never does she seem all of them at once, a complete, complex human being. It’s not just the tension between Marilyn and Norma Jean, it’s fragmentation. It’s not the fault of Michelle Williams, who does an excellent and believable job in a challenging role, but it doesn’t hang together: Colin still sees her as a ‘Greek Goddess’ when she’s supposed to be humanised (to her dismay) and while Olivier gives his grudging respect for her lasting in Hollywood, it’s not clear why, or how this freewheeling spirit who never grew up and lives only by finding ephemeral comfort in the arms of a series of men also has that sort of savvy. The conclusion is thus strained and emotionally hollow.

A parade of stars make appearances, including Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi in roles that inspire affection. The up-and-comers I’ve been looking out for lately, Dominic Cooper and Toby Jones, were both in attendance, and of course Emma Watson sparkles. Of all of them, though, Brannagh seems to be having the most fun – but also seems to be sending himself up rather than trying to capture Olivier, who really is nowhere to be seen here and who is painted as a past-it stage actor left behind by the world and performing in a rather laughable way, which just isn’t true.

This isn’t a film for truth. Unfortunately, it rather needed to be, for without it, there’s almost nothing of interest left.