My Week With Marilyn (2011)
My Week With Marilyn is a kind of “biopic” movie, directed by Simon Curtis and scripted by Adrian Hodges. Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Dominic Cooper, Julia Ormond, and Emma Watson are stars who perform in it. Michelle Williams performances Marilyn Monroe and she is the major character in this “biopic”. The movie is based on two books that are written by Colin Clark. And, it portrays the making of the film called The Prince and the Showgirl, performed by Marilyn Monroe. The movie is basically about a week during the shooting of The Prince and the Showgirl when Marilyn Monroe was flirting with Colin, a young man who is working as a third assistant director for the film and as the only man who understands Monroe’s claims, in London, after Monroe’s husband, Arthur Miller, have gone to New York for a work.
My Week With Marilyn is not a movie that depicts Marilyn Monroe’s success in before and after the film but depicts Marilyn Monroe’s incapacity of texts or catchwords and her psychology as depression during the shooting of the 1957 film when her husband is not around her while others are boring her with their extreme admirations. So, the film generally focuses on how Marilyn Monroe reflects her depressed psychology in her work rather than demonstrating her physical appearance or beauty in her movie anymore to depict that the woman, who is admirable for years for her beauty and her movies, is actually a human being who suffers from unreal and unhappy or insubstantial marriage, sense of motherhood, cruelty or rudeness of men and excessive fan-crowd.
My Week With Marilyn is a biopic because it presents “a simple recounting of the facts of someone’s life”(7). And also, it “narrates, exhibits, and celebrates the life of a subject in order to demonstrate, investigate, or question — her importance in the world; to illuminate the fine points of a personality; and for both artist and spectator to discover what it would be like to be this person”(10) because the audience discover inner soul and psychology of Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn. She “did something interesting in life, known mostly in public, transformed into a character”(10) so that she became Marilyn Monroe; however, the movie demonstrates her actualness instead of cliches such as to say that “Marilyn Monroe was the sexiest actress on earth” or “Marilyn Monroe is the best actress in the world”.
Other than that, the antagonist, Colin notices Monroe’s psychology and he also changes in the movie. For example, while he thinks that he is in love with the costume designer girl (Emma Watson), he actually falls in love Marilyn Monroe when they start to be closer. Therefore, we can say that the director tries to represent something important, that is, falling in love Marilyn Monroe not just for her beauty, but for her realm. In other words, as Simon Prebble says about the director’s this focus: “He effectively presents Clark’s evolution, portraying his initial naivety and worship of Monroe’s public persona and later his resignation in the face of her less-than-glamorous private life”(53). With portraying Marilyn Monroe as a depressed or — maybe untalented during her shooting in her movie, My Week With Marilyn tries to focus attention the miserable psychology of a very famous woman to point that Marilyn Monroe is a human being before all cliches, in a feministic or in a humanistic way. Prebble stresses also about this issue by the director as “However, his voice for Monroe is unconvincing. While she is depicted in the text as often confused, insecure, and dazed, — more than throaty and not sexy — doesn’t fit the nuances of the Monroe with whom Clark spent that memorable week”(53).
So basically, we see “the filmmaker’s own version of the truth”(10). To prove that, we can present the theory that supports this idea “Biopics of women — are weighted down by myths of suffering, victimization, and failure perpetuated by a culture whose films reveal an acute fear of women in the public realm. Female biopics can be made empowering only by a conscious and deliberate application of a feminist point of view” because new ways of looking to a woman are presented, old conventions are criticized and seeing Marilyn Monroe as Barbie doll is changed by My Week With Marilyn”(10). The film also does not define Marilyn Monroe in a direct way but it has several passages that Monroe used in order to provide clues about her inner soul, nor it judges the protagonist’s way of life in order to provide relativity to the audience. So, without doing any sexism or gender discrimination, the audience can watch and understand the message of the movie that is to bring the understanding of the bad psychology of a female icon because of the social oppression.
On the other hand, the film does not want to remind the audience what is so special about the icon; Marilyn Monroe. Instead of doing that, it only reminds the audience the psychology of the icon with her sentences. Several sentences demonstrate that Marilyn Monroe has a soul but she is not free from social oppression. However, the major ones are more remarkable.
For example, when we first see Marilyn Monroe in the movie, she is going down from the helicopter and paparazzi bores her(13:03:00). She has sunglasses in this scene but her overwhelmed eyes and face are clear to realize. We see harsh and extreme admiration in this scene and it is harmful to her psychology. The film focuses on the look of her to portray her hypertension so that the audience notice boredom of a famous woman, nonsense excessive fan-crowd and therefore she is not only that person or not just a beautiful actress. So basically the movie tries to say that a woman or a beautiful actress and an icon is not just a type but an individual.
The second one is, when actors and actresses are all ready to rehearse, she is late and very nervous because she knows that everyone expects so many talents from her even in the first rehearsal(20:35:00). Therefore, we see social and general pressure is there to exulcerate her in this scene and she begins to become much more nervous because of them. Thirdly, when her partner of the play argues with her about false catchwords by her, he, very rudely says that she has no talent but if she does it with using her only sexiness, it will be great work (35:02:10). He means she is nothing but sexy and he sees her as a sex object just like the other men in the movie, except Colin.
Besides, other female characters try to relieve her, however, men always treat her as a sex object. They always ask her about her sexual life and pay compliments to her about her beauty but women and Colin support her because they know that if she believes herself, she can do it, not if she uses only her sexiness. That is to say, she is aware that she is known as a sex object and she suffers from this idea about her and the movie reflects this message so clear so that the audience can understand her reality.
Lastly and most importantly, she is unhappy with her marriage because she knows that her husband does not love her and also knows his brutal thoughts about her. She is strongly aware that her husband is married her because she is “Marilyn Monroe”. When she realizes that, after reading his diaries, her depression arises and she aborts her unknown baby (except her) and Colin is the only one who sees that scene (00:55:40). In other words, the film wants to depict that if someone or any man see her interests, soul, and individuality, admiration reaches significance or real meaning.
Furthermore, Marilyn Monroe has mostly naive sentences when she talks about motherhood, family life, love, and sex. These sentences can be another example of her feelings, ideas or thoughts and sensitiveness or emotions to prove that her individuality. Although Dodal Stewart argues the film as “But the audience sees this man spend a week (actually, more like a month, but whatever) with the icon and neither he nor we learn very much about her, beyond what we already knew: She was lonely and troubled and not an object but a woman” (2), actually, we do learn.
We learn her interests (except acting and singing) such as reading James Joyce and costume design, her sad family life in the past and its effects in her feelings, or her real desire is to be loved by a man as an ordinary girl as she says to Colin. And Colin also learns her. He learns just like the audience for the first time Monroe not as a stereotyped Marilyn Monroe, but as an individual and sensitive woman who suffers from society and her marriage or her wrong relationships and loneliness. What is important in here is related to these learnings from Monroe to Colin because she starts to be much more talented after a week with him. So, he, in a sense, contributes her talent with only to support and believe her. Therefore, the film’s main message is provided with a man who understands an icon’s psychology and its reasons; rather than admiring her in order to be the same as other men.
In conclusion, My Week With Marilyn is a
biopic that depicts Marilyn Monroe’s depressed psychology (when she is aware
that people does not love or like her because they do not really know her) to
support women and reject the perception of seeing them as sex objects or to
treat icons and women as individuals. Also, it romanticizes Marilyn Monroe and
tells the audience about her as an individual and a human being and a strong
woman who needs only to real support for her. To support her, it uses a young
man who falls in love with her after learning specific and lovely things and
knowing her not as a sex object, but as a woman, a human being and also an
individual who suffers from contemporary or real pains such as sadness of
family, feeling of cruelty of men, unhappy marriage and desire to motherhood.
Once Sarah Pines thinks that the director of the movie re-creates Monroe with
saying that “Being fully aware that she is a highly sought-after star, she, on
the one hand, wants to dedicate herself to the production of the film, on the
other hand, however, she wants to escape her image through constant
procrastination. Thus, Curtis re-creates Marilyn as a cliché by both
presenting her as a “goddess” who has become flesh and blood, and highlights
the cult centered around her person (the platonic and boundless adoration of
Colin who at one point even calls her a “Greek goddess” to which Marilyn
replies “I just want to be loved like a regular girl.”), and as a wrecked,
helpless, infantile simpleton, respectively”(3) . However, we cannot say that
Colin is platonic nor Marilyn is helpless because, with the little help of
Colin to her, she arises and completes the movie. Thus, rather than
demonstrating an icon as a goddess, beauty, or only sexy, the film portrays
Marilyn Monroe’s internal soul and psychology to indicate an icon as an
individual and powerful woman with its feminist ideology.
Work Cited
Bingham, Dennis. Whose Lives Are They Anyway?: The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre. “A Respectable Genre of Very Low Repute,” Rutgers UP, 2011. pp. 7-10.
Clark, Colin. My Week With Marilyn. 2011. Read by Simon Prebble. pp. 53.
