My Week with Marilyn

So, I finally got to see the Movie “My Week with Marilyn”.  I started watching it on a plane a few years ago and couldn’t get into it because there were too many distractions.  It moved slow in the beginning, so I dropped it.  This morning, I was up early, so I turned on the TV and there it was.  I decided to give ‘her’ another chance.

Initially, I thought it was going to be about a man who was a reporter and got to spend a week with her telling her story.  Alas, it was not.

It was about a man who had a brief ‘affair’ with her for a week.  In this movie it gave insight was to who Marilyn was; how lost, how empty.  You could see was always searching for something she’d never find.

Marilyn had 3 marriages.  One to a man she called “Daddy”.  That was her first marriage which was before she became the blond bombshell.   She never found peace in any of them.  Her marriages were to older men; a father figure so to speak.  This man, with whom she had the affair was 7 years her junior.  She stated in the movie that she’d never kissed a younger man before.  She was 30 at the time.

While this alleged affair was going on (and when I say affair, they never eluded to a sexual relationship.  It was something more of the emotional kind.  A mental vacation so to speak), she was married to Arthur Miller.  He was ELEVEN years older than her.  In the movie Marilyn states how she never knew her father.  Is it any surprise she married men who could fill that void in her life?  I believe the reasons her marriages never worked, is because the men who were so much older finally realized that even they couldn’t ‘fix’ what was going on and therefore that was that.

Now, I can neither confirm nor deny this as I wasn’t there and what I saw was merely a movie about her.  And God knows how “He said/She said” stories work out.  But what I found so compelling about this movie is that she was yet another lost soul just looking for acceptance.

Sadly, what she did wrong, which so many do wrong, is to put her soul into the acceptance of others.  She died not knowing what it was like to accept ones self.

This movie portrayed a tortured soul who relied on others to help her get through her day.

She never had a solid upbringing.  Her mother was mentally ill and she was raised in foster homes.  It’s no wonder she didn’t have a sense of self.

It breaks my heart to see this movie, because one of the lines in the movie told her by her acting coach was, “Marilyn, you have NO idea the importance of who you are in this world!”

What a terribly sad moment in the movie.  She was being guided back to bed from a tormented night.  One of many I’m sure.

But I believe it to be true.  She really had no idea who she was to people.  She reveled or retracted in the moments when people descended upon her in public.  But she probably never understood why.  And when those moments passed, and she was left alone, she was truly alone.  And totally empty.  And likely tortured.

In the end, she relied on pills to get her up and let her down.  It was a vicious cycle that would lead to her demise.  Under what circumstances will always be a mystery.

But the truth was this….. she died as she felt she lived, which was alone.

And for that, my heart goes out to her.  She was lead through life by  people she trusted, and was let down in life by those same people.

I wonder if Marilyn lived today as the blond bombshell; would her story be different?

I guess we’ll never know.