My Week With Marilyn

Marilyn Monroe is the least important part of this. She’s the complication for the protagonists, a narrator, Eddie Redmayne, and Sir Laurence Olivier, played by Kenneth Branagh. In what is ultimately a very good movie, the filmmakers go out of their way to explain that in spite of all of the problems she caused, Monroe was a movie star in every way, and was therefore worth the trouble. But if this movie could have another title, it would be called “Untreated Addiction.” So many of her quirks and problems, from the littlest things all the way up to her miscarriage, were obviously caused by a serious abuse of pills. Filmmakers give us a happy ending. Olivier gets the film he wants and the narrator gets a good story to tell. But in spite of the fact that this chapter of Monroe’s life winds up okay, we all know the rest of the story ends in tragedy.