Oh, oh, oh. My cheeks are still blushing, my voice is yearning to be soft, whispery and to sing in a bathtub and my mind is still in the dreamlike atmosphere, somewhere between the magic of a movie set and the escape into the English countryside with the one who just may rescue you, at least for the day. Oh how many notes can this film hit? Since viewing the world premiere at the New York Film Festival just a few hours ago, I remain catapulted into a secret world of one of the greatest Hollywood stars of all times. "My Week with Marilyn" is narrated and shown through the eyes of the young Colin Clark, who is so hungry to be on a major movie set that he will do anything. His hunger, portrayed perfectly by Eddie Redmayne, is so palpable, it's in every look, in every movement, in every change as he unexpectedly becomes the closest confidante and source of escape and some kind of a confirmation, for the (sometimes) lost Marilyn. Let's get right to the most challenging and most magical element of this film: Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. Many have tried to portray the Hollywood goddess. Many have failed, again and again. Williams melts into the role. Like honey on the screen. Angelic, luminous, ravishing. Lost and centered at the same time. Real and cinematic. Yearning for approval, from everyone, from anyone. Williams blends the multiple dimensions of Marilyn naturally - the public Marilyn, the movie star; the private Marilyn and the part she rehearses in front of us in the "The Princess and the Showgirl". And when she is most vulnerable, when the depth of of love from her newlywed husband, playwright Arthur Miller, is not as strong, as he leaves the set to be in New York, she seeks love and confirmation from the young Colin. "“It's often just enough to be with someone. I don't need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You're not alone.", Marilyn needs dozes of confirmations, from the fans, from the love of her life, or a current love of her life, that she is not alone, as she once said: “I have feelings too. I am still human. All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent. ” On the movie set, with the sharp Kenneth Branagh in the role of Laurence Olivier on their summer of 1956 movie set of the "The Prince and the Showgirl" , Marilyn is insecure and requires ample preparation and many takes to achieve her perfection. Despite the many minutes or hours of her famous chronic tardiness on set, or takes, once she does it right, as they said, you cannot take your eyes off her. Based on a true story, yet transporting the viewer to dreams that we all can dream and that can just come true for one day or one week and then stay in your memories forever. Will be indulging further in the Curtis-induced film opium..."It's all make believe, isn't it?"
The disintegration of a marriage, or of any loving relationship, never happens overnight. It happens gradually, painfully stripping slivers and then chunks of love until the rip is so big and exhaustion so high that warning signs can no longer be ignored. Michelle Williams, as the spontaneous, ambitious, radiating and sweet as candy Cindy, portrays beautifully this exhaustion and transformation into a self without that integral piece. "There is nothing left for you here. Nothing left" - she screams with hopelessness to her husband Dean, subtly demonstrating that she digged and digged and tried to resurrect the once encompassing, growing, magical love. But it is not Cindy's fault, nor it is Dean's. Nor there is one defining moment or event that tripped the love from growing. It is the tiny toxins that creep in, almost unnoticeably, and that for some reason keep multiplying. And the toxin-free period, the falling in love period, is beauty in every shot. Their falling in love is all that you feel when love unexpectedly happens. Uncommon. Original. Momentous. Flying. Together. And the erosion is all that love isn't. It is common. Just like all relationship disintegrations happen. With the hopeless grip, unable to change or steer. Even in the desperate act of attempted salvaging of the love, in the symbollically named themed-motel room "The Future Room". The future without a future. Alternating past and present sequences show us the beauty of the beginnings and the twisted painful beauty of the endings. Both worlds, the young, foolish, playful in love, energy and life giving world and the adult, routine, daily grind, exhausting and energy sucking world are portrayed with purity, rawness, truth - cinema verite style (if I may say). The camera, the cinematography, the music, the details of the past revealed in the right moments, the very perfect casting, the labor of love project for all - makes it worth the 12 year and 67 script drafts of wait. Michelle and Ryan are too good, too magnetic to give us just 110 minutes of perfect shots and scenes. When you look at every screen shot, look at every poster (there are many, and they are all equally magnetic, even the distributor couldn't choose only one), there is this unconscious assumption that makes it all seem like this is the film and the story that was always meant to happen with these two anchors. The screen awaits them for more.
