My Week With Marilyn
Jan. 25th, 2012 08:20 am![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
giandujakissThe Oscar nominations reminded me I think I meant to post about this movie.
I ... don't think I saw the same movie that everyone else saw.
I saw a movie about a very troubled Marilyn Monroe, who was extremely insecure and desperately in need of constant affirmations that she was loved and desired, and was very, very good at manipulating people - particularly men - to get those affirmations. And her particular technique for accomplishing this was to create a false intimacy - to convince a man that he was the only one she could open up to, that he was seeing the "real" Marilyn, unlike all those other people to whom she presented a staged persona. In fact, however, the "real" Marilyn she purported to present was just as manufactured as her public presence.
But I don't think that's the movie everyone else was watching. Or maybe that was the movie only some of us were watching?
IDEK. It was entertaining, anyway, but that Howard Stark guy struck an incredibly bad note. It was one thing to do that schtick in a comic book movie; in My Week with Marilyn it came off as parody, and completely out-of-step with the rest of the film.
As for Michelle Williams, she was very good but at the end of the day, Marilyn Monroe had something indefinable that no one has ever been able to match, and I found that the gap between Williams and Monroe detracted from my enjoyment of the film.
I really should go back and rewatch Poppy Montgomery in Blonde - I remember finding that miniseries very powerful and disturbing when it aired.
Random unrelated fandom-community observation - it seems to me from watching Festivids commentary that there's a lot more activity on the Dreamwidth side of things than we had last year or that I would have expected. Rec lists tend to link to Dreamwidth; comments at Dreamwidth match or exceed the LJ comments at least for a lot of vids. It seems like a striking shift, although I'm not sure if I'm imagining it.
I ... don't think I saw the same movie that everyone else saw.
I saw a movie about a very troubled Marilyn Monroe, who was extremely insecure and desperately in need of constant affirmations that she was loved and desired, and was very, very good at manipulating people - particularly men - to get those affirmations. And her particular technique for accomplishing this was to create a false intimacy - to convince a man that he was the only one she could open up to, that he was seeing the "real" Marilyn, unlike all those other people to whom she presented a staged persona. In fact, however, the "real" Marilyn she purported to present was just as manufactured as her public presence.
But I don't think that's the movie everyone else was watching. Or maybe that was the movie only some of us were watching?
IDEK. It was entertaining, anyway, but that Howard Stark guy struck an incredibly bad note. It was one thing to do that schtick in a comic book movie; in My Week with Marilyn it came off as parody, and completely out-of-step with the rest of the film.
As for Michelle Williams, she was very good but at the end of the day, Marilyn Monroe had something indefinable that no one has ever been able to match, and I found that the gap between Williams and Monroe detracted from my enjoyment of the film.
I really should go back and rewatch Poppy Montgomery in Blonde - I remember finding that miniseries very powerful and disturbing when it aired.
Random unrelated fandom-community observation - it seems to me from watching Festivids commentary that there's a lot more activity on the Dreamwidth side of things than we had last year or that I would have expected. Rec lists tend to link to Dreamwidth; comments at Dreamwidth match or exceed the LJ comments at least for a lot of vids. It seems like a striking shift, although I'm not sure if I'm imagining it.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-25 01:45 pm (UTC)I didn't know Poppy M had been in a Blonde pic! I really like her -- read that book, too -- I'll have to check it out.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-25 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-25 06:10 pm (UTC)As for Dreamwidth. I'm over on LJ lots less recently (it's now content filtered at work) and I'm surprised that I feel like I'm missing less than I did when I tried to use only Dreamwidth before. So maybe there is something to that. Although I still think that comms are more active over there. Or maybe there are just more of them?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-25 06:15 pm (UTC)I find Dreamwidth is a lot less busy than LJ, still - many people I follow are only on LJ, and yes, there are a lot more LJ comms that are a lot more active. But these days I prefer Dreamwidth if only because Dreamwidth actually gives me comment notifications, and LJ ... does not.