“Shall I be her?”I hate that they stripped Marilyn of all that quicksilver energy she actually had. In this film, she drifts through every scene, all languid and heavy, like someone put syrup over her sparkle.
Marilyn Monroe was electric. She had this thing where she could walk into a room and own it. Here, they just slowed her down into this tragic figure and the movie won’t stop insisting that’s “vulnerable Marilyn”. Vulnerability doesn’t mean you erase what made someone brilliant.
The whole thing is so melodramatic. Everyone speaks like they’re living in a dreamy memory. Very romanticized tragedy energy, but not in the good way. It’s trying so hard to be intimate and profound that it just feels performed. Like everyone’s acting in a movie about being sad for Marilyn instead of just showing Marilyn.
Although, I appreciated Michelle Williams’s performance. She captured Marilyn’s essence pretty well, and that’s genuinely hard to do. Even when the script didn’t give her that spark, there were little moments where you could see it trying to break through.
Eddie Redmayne surprised me by giving heart to the film. There’s sincerity in the way he looks at her, a mix of admiration and helplessness. It felt like he was grounding the movie with authenticity.
Overall, I think it wanted to show us the real woman behind the myth, but it made her feel less real instead, less alive. And that’s the exact opposite of what Marilyn Monroe was.
