The Oscar battle of the biopics is in full swing with the release of “My Week with Marilyn.” Michelle Williams hands in exactly the kind of performance the Academy loves. As Marilyn Monroe she turns the camera on Hollywood, playing one of its biggest stars at the peak of her career.
Based on two books by Colin Clark, “The Prince, The Showgirl and Me” and “My Week with Marilyn,” the movie’s main character isn’t Munroe, but Clark (Eddie Redmayne), the third assistant director on “The Prince and the Showgirl” starring Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Munroe. It was the summer of 1956 and Clark was a twenty-three-year-old, who, like the rest of the planet, was smitten with Monroe. The two form a bond, and for a few days it looks like his love for her might actually be reciprocated. Perhaps this should have been titled “The Week I Almost Made It with Marilyn.”
Everyone has been predicting Oscar success for Williams and rightly so, she’s very good, but the bulk of the movie is carried by Redmayne. It is his coming of age story that really fuels the movie’s dramatic arc and his youthful excitement at meeting and, possibly mating with, the movie star is infectious. Of course he’s playing against Williams and Branagh in much showier roles, so I suspect he’ll get the sort shrift attention wise.
As for the above the title stars, Branagh shows two sides to Olivier, the flamboyantly theatrical public persona contrasted against his testy frustration of having to work overshadowed the unprofessional movie star from America. “She’s all instinct, no craft,” he says.
Branagh is very good, but when placed against Williams’s Monroe his work seems to lack the soul she brings to every frame of film. He does have many of the film’s best lines, however. His delivery of lines like, “Trying to teach Marilyn to act is like teaching Urdu to a badger,” is letter perfect and adds much to the movie.
Even almost fifty years after her death Monroe is still one of the best-known actresses in the world. Her famous face adorns everything from wine bottles to Volkswagen commercials, and yet Williams manages to bring something new to someone we thought we knew so well. Her off-screen life, as dramatic as anything she ever did on screen, is tenderly portrayed here but the story isn’t as interesting as the performance.
Williams plays Monroe as a coddled woman-child, crippled by nerves, insecurity, but long on instinct but she goes beyond the little girl lost act so often associated with Monroe. She digs deep, cleaving the role into two parts—the sex-bomb and the vulnerable real life counterpart.
“Shall I be her?” she asks Colin as a crowd descends on them in public. She then shifts effortlessly from the private to the public Marilyn, blowing kisses and turning the flirt up to eleven. But when she is behind closed doors the performance glows. While some of the dialogue is a bit too Psyche 101—“Why do the people I love always leave me?” she pouts at one point—the complexity behind her eyes isn’t.
Williams has perfected playing dour characters in movies like “Blue Valentine,”—so it is a bit of a revelation to see her smile here—but this is something else—well rounded and revelatory.
“My Week with Marilyn” feels a little old-fashioned. The show biz story about, as they say in the film, “a great actor who wants to be a movie star and a movie star who wants to be a great actor,” is overtly theatrical, but Williams brings real soul and heart, handing in the Oscar worthy performance that eluded Monroe in real life.
“Take This Waltz,” the second feature from actor-turned-director Sarah Polley, is a bittersweet Canadian kitchen sink drama about being trapped in a marriage with someone who can’t speak his mind and falling in love with someone who can’t help but speak his mind.
Margot (Michelle Williams) is a struggling writer married to Lou (Seth Rogen), cookbook writer and home cook. Married for five years they have a loving but superficial relationship. She’s not unhappy exactly, but she’s not entirely happy either. When she meets Daniel (Luke Kirby), a quick talking neighbor, painter and rickshaw driver, she must make the painful decision about whether it is worthwhile to trade someone old for someone new.
In her last film, “Away from Her,” Polley placed Alzheimer’s disease between a husband and wife. Here she shows what happens when one partner takes a relationship for granted.
Polley creates complicated relationship patterns in her films, weaving together small moments to create a large and profound truth. “Away from Her,” is a sublime mix of the mundane and the heartfelt, just like real life. “Take this Waltz” too is an interesting look how relationships unravel but has a much more melancholy edge. From the minor chord music that makes up much of the soundtrack to Williams’ terminally sad expression—her face fluctuate between joy and sorrow with just a very slight change in expression—the movie redefines bittersweet.
We never really see the upside of Margot’s relationships and it’s hard to know when she’s happy, or if she’ll ever be truly happy. The focus here is a little fuzzier than it was in “Away from Here.” Margot’s search for happiness a little less defined. Some audiences will get it, others will likely find her self serving.
So why spend time with Margot, Lou and Daniel? Apart from the beautiful shots of Toronto neighborhoods (although Torontonians will notice that the geography doesn’t make any sense!) “Take this Waltz” is recommended for the uncompromising way it presents its story. This isn’t a rom com, although there are laughs and it isn’t a traditional romance. This is a refreshingly raw slice of life with all the frustrating things that make us human front and center.
Williams, Kirby and Sarah Silverman (as Margot’s sister-in-law) hand in strong work, but for me the surprise was Seth Rogen’s naturalistic performance. As a comedian I expect him to always go for the joke, and while he does raise the odd smile all his reactions—humorous or otherwise—are completely derived from the situation and feel authentic.
“Take this Waltz” doesn’t have the emotional impact of “Away from Her,” but it is a different, lower key story about the erosion that an undercurrent of tension can have on a relationship.
“Blue Valentine,” a new character study starring Ryan Gostling and Michelle Williams, starts off with the loss of a beloved family pet and ends on an even more downbeat note.
The non-linear story begins in present day. Dean (Gostling), Cindy (Williams) and their daughter Frankie (Faith Wladyka) are a family unit teetering on the edge. Notes of tension are infused in their conversation and the only thing that seems to bond the couple is their love for Frankie. For the next 100 minutes we learn about them by jumping around on their relationship’s timeline; how they met — while visiting people at an old folks’ home — and how a once happy pairing fell prey to distrust and difficulty.
As you might expect from actors of the calibre of Gostling and Williams, the performances are top notch. Gosling seems to embody Dean, a high school drop-out with a great facility for love but also for volatile behavior and Williams has one of those empathic faces that can vacillate between joy and sorrow with just a very slight change in expression. But for all the skill of its performers “Blue Valentine” feels one-note.
The break up of Dean and Cindy’s marriage is not only painful for their make-believe movie family but for the viewer as well. Emotionally raw is good. So is heart-wrenching. But the repetition with which both these aspects of the story are displayed wears down any feeling the viewer may have for either character. It’s like watching a couple bicker on the subway. You feel sorry for them but hope they’ll get off at the next stop.
