An impossible task


Many of the threads here are critical of both Michelle Williams' performance and her very casting in this movie. But they are all missing the issue. The fact is it is impossible to make a movie about someone so famous and familiar without a disconnect in the person of the actor or actress playing the character. Michelle does not look like Marilyn, but then no one does. She does come close, especially in the scene in the Palace, where she asks "should I be her?" just before becoming "Marilyn" for the adulation of the staff.

Think about it. No movie about Elvis, JFK, Nixon, the Beatles, etc., etc., has ever been able to overcome the fact that we just know the subject too well. We are always aware we are watching an actor, and comparing---with one exception:

Jamie Foxx was so much Ray Charles, that I actually forgot he was an actor playing Ray. The look (especially if you've seen pictures of young Ray), the voice--just amazing.

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Well, sometimes the physical resemblence is decent enough to suppress your annoyance and disbelief. I thought Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin was a great choice... Vincent D'Onofrio as Orson Welles in Ed Wood was great... but sometimes the casting is such a brain fart that no matter how good the performance is you just sit there wondering how blind people can be bired as casting directors. Movies are the art of suspension of disbelief... If you make a biopic about a famous face, the stakes are higher and there's an extra ton of disbelief bricks waiting to drop on you if the casting is wrong... and if you can't get it right then don't make the movie. It is that crucial.

Having said that, I've always wondered why it's so difficult to get Marilyn right. She was very beautiful and there was a magic about her, but feature wise there wasn't anything that stood out. She didn't have Bette Davis' saucer eyes or Barbra Streisand's nose or Angelina Jolie's lips or Brooke Shields' eyebrows... just generic features really. Yet no matter who you slap a platinum blonde wig and bright red lipstick on, it won't work. She's like the Coca-Cola recipe.

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I forgot about Julianne Moore. You are right about that. Of course it helped that she and Palin are virtually twins.

Generic features for Marilyn, true, but many many writers have commented that there was something about her that the camera just loved. That's an intangible that's impossible to duplicate. If you saw the new documentary "Love, Marilyn" it really captures that. Plus, her writings, as shown there, were also magical. She was very complex, a tortured, poetic soul--absolutely inimitable.

When she died, I can just hear Olivier saying "Gee, I guess she really was sick."

On the other side of the coin, there's the occasional figure that almost anyone can duplicate. Hitler comes to mind. Slap that moustache on a person, and comb the hair to the side, and--voila! You've got Hitler.

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Oh, I forgot one... James Franco in the James Dean biopic. Wrong eye color but other than that, spitting image.

As for Hitler... yeah, but hair and mustache only takes you so far. Take a look at this pic - what's the one striking feature here? It's the eyes, the crazy, stern blue eyes:

http://www.thedailyrash.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Adolf-Hitler-572.jpg

So if I were to cast someone as Hitler today, I'd probably go with Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt:
http://www.herr-der-ringe-film.de/v3/media/galerie/hobbit001/hobbit_02/mikael_persbrandt2.jpg

A few years back I might've gone with Udo Kier...
http://www.thatfilmguy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Udo-Kier.jpg

And 30 years ago I'd have gone with Swedish actor Allan Edwall:
http://sverigesradio.se/diverse/appdata/isidor/images/news_images/965/1853693_520_369.jpg

That's three decent Hitlers, all accomplished actors, one German and two Swedes, they'd pull off the accent just fine. If on the other hand you were to slap a mustache on Ashton Kutcher, you'd have little more than Ashton Kutcher with a mustache.

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Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison was spot on too.

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I think Michelle Williams did a great job as Monroe.

Its that man again!!

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