My Week With Marilyn

No matter how often the word “icon” is thrown around, there have been few true icons—people whose fame actually shifts the world around it. One true icon is Marilyn Monroe. In My Week With Marilyn, Michelle Williams does not overly vamp or play into that iconography. She creates the Monroe underneath—a self-conscious, self-pitying child. That’s largely accurate, and since vulnerability is one characteristic Williams usually brings to her roles, it makes her performance here the one for which she’ll be remembered. The film chronicles the production of The Prince and the Showgirl, which Monroe made with an increasingly exasperated Laurence Olivier (a scene-stealing Kenneth Branagh). Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) is the assistant assigned to chaperone the starlet, and the action is seen through his eyes. Williams’ performance stands as one of the best all year.