My Week

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But in , following the success of the first book, Clark published My Week with Marilyn , an account of their nine days together, an experience, Clark said, 'so dramatic and extraordinary that it was impossible to include it in my daily chatterings'. And now comes a film based on both books, also called My Week with Marilyn , starring the American actress Michelle Williams as Monroe, with a British cast headed by year-old Eddie Redmayne as Clark and Kenneth Branagh as Olivier — an actor with whom he was often compared in his younger days.

For the director Simon Curtis, the social and political background to this gently romantic interlude is as interesting as the main story itself.

Marilyn was emblematic of an exciting, complicated new America. Arguably, is the year that Britain finally started to shake off the shadow of the Second World War. Rationing had only just ended. So for me, this is about Marilyn and her glamorous, colourful American entourage arriving in black-and-white England.

Curtis first approached the producer David Parfitt about a possible film based on the books seven years ago. But one problem about making a film about Monroe is that she feels so familiar and iconic: She died almost 50 years ago, aged 36, but remains firmly part of the collective consciousness. We think we know everything about her, from her curvaceous frame, that breathy, babyish voice, her sexy shimmy, to her failed marriages and affairs, and her tragic premature death from a drug overdose in Adrian Hodges, the film's screenwriter, saw the problem immediately.

Even people who don't know why they know Marilyn Monroe know her. That's how big she is in the culture. If you'd said to me one day I'd write a film about her, I'd have been amazed, because I wouldn't have known where to start. The saving grace for Hodges was that Clark's books about Monroe are snapshots of a short, specific time, which meant he could avoid the cliches and caricatures now associated with the actress. Thus, he says, his script is 'a view of her as a woman of 30, at a crossroads, still close enough to the person she'd been to have contact with reality.

She was not quite the fading supernova. I liked the idea that this was before anything was inevitable for her. The film isn't uncritical of her behaviour and it certainly doesn't give her a free pass. It's just that I think there are other things to say about someone who was once a complete person, not just this… thing. Michelle Williams also admits to feeling nervous about playing Monroe. I'd always been interested in the private Marilyn, the Marilyn before "Marilyn". Even as a young girl, my primary connection wasn't with this larger-than-life personality, but with what was going on underneath.

As Williams sees the story, 'She was expecting to go to London and make a movie with the most esteemed actor of the time. When she arrived she felt she was being mistreated and laughed at.

Olivier… didn't treat her with the kind of attention she was hoping for. She felt she needed allies — and she found one in Colin Clark.

Although it is Marilyn's name in the film's title, Clark emerges as an equally fascinating individual. He came from a very privileged background; an early scene in the film shows him driving away from the magnificent Saltwood Castle in Kent, where he grew up. The real castle was used in the film. His father was the renowned art historian Kenneth Clark, best known as the writer and presenter of the television series Civilisation. Eddie Redmayne found Clark a complex character. He went to Eton, but while all his friends were hunting, shooting and fishing types, his father was an art historian — at a time when no one quite knew what a historian was.

He was slightly embarrassed about it. He had a rather glamorous background — with people like Olivier, Vivien Leigh and Margot Fonteyn visiting his parents' home for tea. So he came out of Eton and Oxford with tremendous confidence, but in need of an emotional education. This approach gave us an interesting angle for a biopic - sparing us, thankfully, from the Hollywood formula that so often garners Oscar nominations like Michelle WIlliams's for this role - but I found that wet-noodle Colin Eddie Redmayne got in the way of this story about Marilyn Monroe; to my mind, either Colin should've been the hero and Marilyn only seen occasionally, or Marilyn the heroine and Colin only seen occasionally.

Dividing their screen time more or less equally made it difficult for me to get into either character's shoes, and I was unsatisfied as a result. It's beautifully shot, though, and Kenneth Branagh channeled Laurence Olivier impressively. A good enough film, but not quite great; a near-miss. Any biopic of someone as timeless and monumentally classic as Marilyn Monroe is going to underwhelm compared to the real thing, but with this film it got pretty darn close to impressive. Marilyn Monroe was a very flawed individual, and her life was tormented more by her own demons than anything pivotal, such as her divorces, pitfalls, and aberrations with the law and herself.

This film takes on the grappling that Monroe went through in just keeping herself together, and the people who took care of her.

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The people around her get more of the attention, mostly because the film is from the point of view of Colin Clark Redmayne a third assistant director on the set of the film "The Prince and the Showgirl. Olivier and Monroe did not work well together, mostly because Marilyn was trying to show herself as a viable and dramatic actress, and Olivier wanted a break from the world of Shakespeare so he could play the funnyman beside the comedic actress. The charm of the original Marilyn does come across well from Williams, as she conducts herself with the same vulnerable attitudes and whimsical sexuality as the real blonde bombshell.

Branagh also does a very good job of capturing the bravado and sincerity of Olivier, mostly because both men imbibe some of the same qualities. Redmayne, as the caddish assistant, is without a proper personality other than caring about Marilyn and being cunning in order to secure a job. Other than that we're too busy watching Marilyn unfold herself onscreen to care whether or not she breaks the schoolboy's heart or not. The film is so minimal with what actually happens that Monroe comes off as a typically morose, temper tantrum giving, woman-child.

Besides all the drama, it's a very interesting film about the most famous woman in the world. More Top Movies Trailers. DC's Legends of Tomorrow: Black Panther Dominates Honorees. Trending on RT Avengers: My Week with Marilyn Post Share on Facebook. Movie Info In the early summer of , 23 year-old Colin Clark Eddie Redmayne , just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of 'The Prince and the Showgirl'.

Nearly 40 years on, his diary account The Prince, the Showgirl and Me was published, but one week was missing and this was published some years later as My Week with Marilyn - this is the story of that week. When Arthur Miller leaves England, the coast is clear for Colin to introduce Marilyn to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work.

Eddie Redmayne as Colin Clark. Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. Kenneth Branagh as Sir Laurence Olivier.

My Week with Marilyn: the true story

Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller. Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh. Judi Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike. Dominic Cooper as Milton Greene. Emma Watson as Lucy. Toby Jones as Arthur Jacobs.

Philip Jackson as Roger Smith. Geraldine Somerville as Lady Jane Clark. Derek Jacobi as Sir Owen Morshead. Simon Russell Beale as Cotes-Preedy.

My Week with Marilyn

Pip Torrens as Sir Kenneth Clark. Michael Kitchen as Hugh Perceval. Miranda Raison as Vanessa. Karl Moffatt as Jack Cardiff. Robert Portal as David Orton. It's too early to say whether she'll win the Oscar next year, but a nomination seems a certainty. Williams' performance is bolstered by impeccable turns by an enviable roster of the creamiest cream of British talent: Especial mention must go to Branagh whose Olivier is impeccable.

He accurately displays the legendary actor's sophistication and scurrility, and is bound to receive a supporting Oscar nod.

My Week With Marilyn by Colin Clark

I loved the film's playfulness, for instance when Clark takes Monroe on a tour of Eton, followed by skinny-dipping in a cold river. The filmmakers do well to capture the craziness of Marilyn's world and the feeling of what it was like to be the most famous woman in the world. There are some lovely little touches — like the scene where Clark asks Monroe why she has a picture of Abe Lincoln by her bedside.

Her reply, 'I don't know who my real father was, so why not him? The Golden Age' is well-cast as Colin Clark. Perhaps it's because he looks so much the underdog. He sort of represents every young man who would have killed to be in his shoes.

Clark has his eyes set on Monroe but resigns himself to the fact that Emma Watson's character, a costume assistant, is more his match. A weakness in the story, although I'm unclear of the veracity, is how underused Watson is and how readily she forgives his liaison with Monroe. Didn't girls have higher standards in those days?

Simon Curtis is yet another Englishman who has moved seamlessly from TV to cinema. His film astutely plays down the fact that Colin was brother to the even more famous Alan Clark, a former Conservative MP. Rightly so, I think. This film isn't about the minister or his also-famous diaries. I'm glad the filmmakers didn't sacrifice the film's integrity by moulding it to be rated 12A British certificate to increase ticket sales.

The two or three flashes of flesh are not only welcome, they are vital Monroe said that 'the body is meant to be seen'. Curtis teases us like Marilyn was famous for doing. But he knows not to go too far by showing us any more than is necessary.

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In summary, this is a brilliant biopic, as well as a story of what happened when a young man got close to the star he adored. It is bittersweet and evocative of a golden age of Hollywood. I was made to care for Monroe. I felt bad for her when she was exploited.

Along with Elton John's beautiful song, this film has made me understand Norma Jeane Mortenson a little better. Now I see her as more than a sex symbol. She may have been blonde but she wasn't dumb.

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