My Week with Marilyn (2011)

What’s It About: The post-war fantasy of countless young boys gets another treatment in director Simon Curtis’ true-life biopic, landing the screen vixen smack in the middle of filming The Prince and the Showgirl in 1950s London.

As played by Michelle Williams, who has become one of cinema’s most important actors, this Monroe is a self-conscious mess, constantly late to set, and the cross that director Laurence Olivier (an astoundingly dramatic Kenneth Branagh) must bear as the price to cast an international superstar in his film. Eddie Redmayne is the set gopher assigned to keep an eye on Monroe as she navigates the hilly road between Marilyn, Norma Jean, and the pressures of stardom. Redmayne falls in what he thinks must be love (because what healthy heterosexual young man wouldn’t have?) but discovers far too late that the object of his affection and the woman off-screen are two vastly different people.

Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980)

Sissy Spacek embodied Loretta Lynn in Michael Apted’s biopic well enough to win an Oscar for best actress.  It’s a strong performance in a modestly weak film, helped tremendously by the gifted Tommy Lee Jones, who plays Lynn’s husband, Mooney.

The first half of the film is strong, as Spacek, all pluck and naivete, leaves the poor back country of Kentucky–with Mooney at her side–for the road to superstardom.  There she meets Patsy Cline (Beverly D’Angelo), already a success in the country-western world, who takes the young and talented hillbilly under her wing.  I admired the way Apted and screenwriter Thomas Rickman take the time to build the characters and the tumultuous relationship between Lynn and Mooney.

The second act follows Lynn’s career trajectory a bit too swiftly, moving from gig to gig, and year to year, with alarming speed.  We’re expected to sympathize with the road-weary ingenue, and her struggle to accept her fame, but it all happens so darn fast, we never really get a sense of who she is.  This might have been a great film, if only Apted and Rickman had been a little more consistent.

Still, Coal Miner’s Daughter is worth a look, if a nostalgic one, for Spacek’s terrific performance–and for Jones’, too, for that matter.

1980; starring Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones; directed by Michael Apted; 125 min; PG; in English.