My Week With Marilyn - The Young Man in the 22nd Row Tells All

When your name is Harvey Weinstein and you’re looking to figure prominently in the discussion around the award show water cooler at year’s end, you push out a biopic. The Aviator. Finding Neverland. Miss Potter. Factory Girl. Nowhere Boy. The King’s Speech. Pick any of those, and you're still not past 2004.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there really aren’t many drawbacks to making biopics. Studios love them because they’re usually able to get a big name actor to play whichever historical figure’s on the docket, stand a very good chance at making some dough, and might get some hardware. Actors love them because if they prove to be particularly good at mimicry, wearing that prosthetic nose, and bringing that historical figure to life, they stand a good chance of gaining a ton of critical recognition and, yes, getting some hardware. Audiences love them because they usually get to enjoy a rags-to-riches story and have the opportunity to feel better about all of the times they fell asleep in high school when they were supposed to be learning about these folks in the first place.

2011, in particular, has so many biopics as to inspire washed-up conspiracy theorists everywhere to come out of retirement. Initially, My Week With Marilyn wasn’t something I was particularly enthusiastic about, particularly when compared to something like J. Edgar, The Iron Lady, or A Dangerous Method. But, as fate would have it, it was the first that I had the chance to see and, for whatever reason, I got pretty excited about seeing it. I think I unexpectedly fell a little bit in love with Michelle Williams after seeing the adverts so many times.

My Week With Marilyn tells the story of Colin Clark, a 24 year old British aristocrat with a dream of working in the movie business. After working his connections, he becomes third assistant director on the set of Laurence Olivier’s The Prince and the Showgirl, a starring vehicle for Sir Laurence and Marilyn Monroe. When Marilyn starts to crumble underneath pressures both personal and professional, she and Colin form an unlikely connection and spend a bit of a “lost week” together.

As promising as that sounds, it seems to me that the primary thing that holds the film back is that it's told from the perspective of the young man, Colin, instead of the movie star, Marilyn. I think that it would have been much more effective and infinitely more interesting to have been able to start with her, stay with her, and see exactly what made her tick and what caused her idiosyncrasies.

To that end, while watching the film, there were a ton of times that I really wanted to get some sense of what exactly was in her head. There are moments when she seems so lost and so overwhelmed, and then there are others in which she seems to be in complete control of her image. I wish there had been some dot connectors to point out where the woman ended and the movie star began.

For what she was given, Michelle Williams (who's sure to get a ton of award nominations and maybe a few statuettes) is really good. While she’s a terrific choice to play the actress formerly known as Norma Jeane Baker, sadly, I don’t think the script fully equips her to bring her complete set of talents to bear. It’s not Williams being inconsistent so much as it’s Simon Curtis’ script that’s incomplete.

As for Eddie Redmayne’s turn as Colin Clark, it’s solid, but the half-baked script holds him back too. At the beginning of the film, he seemed to be a bit of a greenback. You know, means well but doesn’t have a lot of practical life or work experience? Well, the kid decides to park his keister on the couch of Olivier’s production company’s office until he’s given some kind of job to do. Good, right? Shows initiative. But when he’s finally given a task by the film producer, he handles it, we’re led to believe, without any problems at all. Uh, hello! He was asked to get NOEL COWARD’s number, which, I might add, he’s told is unlisted. That’s no small thing. How about a moment a la Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada? It’s a real chance to gain more insight into his character. How does he get stuff like that done? While we see him get them into Windsor Castle later through a family connection, we have no idea how he gets that pesky number. Did he rely on another connection? Did he struggle before finally getting it done? Was he really just that good? I’d have liked to have seen that process outlined rather than being given “BOOM, it’s done!” as an answer.

I get it. Boy meets movie star. Boy falls hopelessly in love with movie star. On that level, his performance is very effective, but, as with Williams', more was needed. I know that the scene I’ve described might seem petty and inconsequential in the big picture, but it would have contributed significantly to fleshing out his character and making him that much more three-dimensional instead of relying on such a simplistic character outline.

The rest of the cast is uniformly solid, with particular props going to a scene-stealing Kenneth Branagh as Lawrence Olivier. He’s fantastic, and I hope he gets some much-deserved love at year’s-end. Judi Dench is really good too, and has a wonderful line about how much mascara a woman should wear. However, the one person that completely surprised me was Dougray Scott. It struck me that the guy playing Arthur Miller was really believable, but I had no idea whatsoever that it was Scott until the end credits. Seeing Julia Ormond (one of my favorites!) pop up as Vivien Leigh was a nice surprise too. After The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Temple Grandin, and The Music Never Stopped, it seems like she’s back.

Lastly, I think My Week With Marilyn ends one (or two, if you count the end credit musical sequence) scene too late. There’s a wonderful shot of Colin staring at a blank movie screen in a small theater that seemed announced itself as the film’s final shot . . . and then things continued with a bit that’s supposed to tie things off in a knot when I think, ironically, a messier approach would have served the film better. By that point, by all intents and purposes, the film was done, and to try and spell everything out was the wrong choice.

It’s really too bad. While My Week With Marilyn isn’t a bad film and certainly isn’t unenjoyable by any stretch, a real opportunity’s been missed here. It strikes me as a bit odd that we’ve got a definitive look at the formation of Facebook on the books, but there’s no authoritative piece on the life of one of the cinema’s biggest stars.

There’s a wonderful scene in the middle of the picture. Colin is sent to a much-the-worse-for-wear Marilyn’s dressing room to find out what’s keeping her from the set. He gets starstruck, and ends up revealing that one of his jobs is, essentially, to spy on her. A bleary-eyed Marilyn looks up at him and asks, “Colin, whose side are you on?” He looks back at her, eyes wide with a heart no longer his own, and says, “Yours, Miss Monroe.” I only wish that My Week With Marilyn had been able to say the same thing.

3 1/2 stars (out of 5)

Thoughts From a Red Rug - Blue Valentine

From AFI Fest

Blue Valentine is the rare film that serves more as window than artifice, as it seems more like watching the lives of 2 people through a window than a mere movie. Apparently, the filmmakers were influenced certain recent European films, including 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, one of the finest writer/director teams at work today.

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are Dean and Cynthia, an American middle-class married couple with one child, a daughter (played nicely by Faith Wladyka). Director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance uses a dual timeline to tell the story of the relationship between two people who would probably have never met had not circumstances aligned perfectly, much less gotten married. The film cuts back and forth between the “present” timeline, when their marriage is disintegrating, and the past, when their relationship is beginning and blossoming. Thus, at the end of the film, we’ve reached what might be considered both the conclusion and beginning of their love story.

Blue Valentine’s European sensibilities are readily apparent. Where American films tend to try and balance things/characters to a fault, this film feels like one that’s been lived in rather than created. The balancing act usually means one of two things.

1. Characters are clearly good or clearly bad, and if this isn’t initially apparent, then it’ll be pretty clear how we’re supposed to feel about them by the end of the film.
2. When things are a bit more ambiguous, then each character will have strengths and weaknesses that even out pretty well, a la “you are right from your side and I am right from mine.”

That’s one thing that makes Blue Valentine effective. The 2 main characters are messy, messy people with messy, messy lives. As their relationship breaks down, it’s almost impossible for them to have a rational conversation. When Dean wants to talk honestly, Cynthia thinks he’s being unreasonable, and when Cynthia wants to speak her mind, Dean thinks she’s attacking him. I’ve known people like that. No matter how much they may want to work things out, there’s such an incredible divide in their terminology and in the way that they approach certain things that they will probably never be able to really talk. I found myself feeling so sorry for Dean as the story progressed. Cynthia’s incredibly frustrated with him, but, really, he’s a giant puppy dog. All he wants is to be with his wife and daughter. They’re are all he has, and, what’s more, they’re all he wants.

The writing is fantastic. I know that it’s somewhat silly to gauge everything by the Academy Awards, given the somewhat dubious logic behind their selections, but I sincerely hope that this receives a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. The dialogue is wonderfully authentic, with Williams and Gosling bringing it to effortless life. I love the way that natural speech rhythms are present in their conversations. They’ve got all of the little stutter-stops and false starts that are present in the way that people talk. There’s a great scene where Dean finds a way to compliment and insult Cynthia at the same time by talking about her looks. Essentially, he’s telling her that pretty girls have it easy, because people pay closer attention to them than they might actually deserve by laughing at their jokes, which may or may not actually be funny. He then asks her to tell him a joke, and she tells an obscenely funny one about a pedophile. One of the highlights of the scene is the way that Cynthia starts telling the joke, messes up, and adjusts her delivery automatically to fix her mistake. When I (try to) tell jokes, that happens every time. Additionally, there’s a wonderfully naturalistic scene where Dean plays a little song for a dancing Cynthia out on one of their first dates. It’s just terrific. Also, don’t miss the end credit sequence. It’s is one of the loveliest I’ve ever seen. If you don’t stick around, you’re really missing out.

Chances are the only reason that you might have heard of Blue Valentine was because it received an NC-17 from the MPAA. That’s a sad thing. All too often in this country, so-called “obscure” films only get recognition due to controversy, be it related to the personal lives of the actors or the content of the film itself.

Personally, I’m slightly torn on the whole thing. I understand the MPAA’s place in society, but I question the amount of authority they’re given over a film’s exposure to an audience. If the NC-17 stands, a film that will have an already limited theatrical run shrinks even smaller, because many theaters refuse to play films rated higher than an R and funds for advertising dry up almost immediately.

Is there a significant amount of sexual content in the film? Yes, certainly. Is it pornographic? Not even close.

The emphasis remains squarely on the emotional lives of the characters and their responses to what’s happening. It’s about so much more than sex. Furthermore, it’s not as though sex is some kind of revolutionary subject (though you’d certainly think so, given this country’s public persona). Blue Valentine is documenting the way that a lot of people live and act, from the way that they speak, fight, relate, understand, misunderstand, and, yes, have sex. It’s unfair for the MPAA to suggest that the attempt to be honest about the way that people deal with relationships is a negative thing. It’s yet another example that the U.S. needs a workable adult rating. Personally, I’d go for breaking up the R rating into 2-3 subdivisions to denote the level of “objectionable” material a film contains. Under the current system, Lost In Translation and The Passion of the Christ have the exact same rating. Please.

I sincerely hope that Blue Valentine survives the MPAA appeal process unchanged and finds its way to the audience it deserves. It's one of the brightest lights in a year that's been largely unremarkable, and, even more than that, Blue Valentine is one of the better films to tackle human relationships in recent memory. One of 2010's best films.

4 1/2 stars (out of 5)