2436 Film Catch Up My Week with Marilyn, Margin Call, Wanderlust, Martha Maceyl

Listening to Benny Goodman Stomping at the Savoy, Tommy Dorsey Song of India, Count Basie One O’clock jump, Bob Crosby BobCats, Teddy Wilson Don’t be that Way, Lionel Hampton Muscrat Ramble, Artie Shaw Begin the Begin, Bob Crosby, Woody Herman at the Woodchoppers Ball, Glenn Miller Moonlight Serenade, Jimmy Dorsey I got Rhythm, and Dorsey Brothers Huneysuckle Rose.

 

The most interesting film of recent weeks not previously mentioned is My Week with Marilyn which is based on her visit to the UK in 1956 to make the Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Laurence Olivier played in this film by Kenneth Branagh. The film is based on the books by Colin Clark on his life and relationship with Marilyn during the brief period in which she made the film after her husband, the writer Henry Miller, returned to the USA. There is some controversy over the extent of his relationship with the extraordinary star.

 

Monroe was a serious actress who trained in the Method and was notorious for her temperament, appalling time keeping and inability to remember her lines. Those who know her story will appreciate her vulnerability and the extent to which she was exploited by men who ought to have known better. Whether she committed suicide, her death was accidental or she was murdered is unlikely to ever be resolved just as he death of President Kennedy, her one time lover.

 

I liked the film and having looked at some of the available material am inclined to accept the main thesis, that because of the abominable way she was treated by Olivier  who saw the film as making him to a Hollywood star and that Miller could not cope with what most regard as a trophy wife and returned to the USA she felt  abandoned and isolated despite the presence of her  acting coach (Zoe Wannamker) and  her young business partner/manger with whom she  had also  a relationship and turned to the young Colin who was mesmerised by her, provided attention and comfort and may well have enjoyed a sexual experience or two with her.

 

Eddie Redmayne plays Colin and whose performance in Les Miserables is also a revelation. In the film he gets a job on the film as a personal assistant through his family’s friendship with the Olivier’s. He stays at a local Inn and takes an interest in a young wardrobe assistant played by Emily Watson, of Harry Potter fame.

 

Michelle Williams as Marilyn brilliantly captures her on screen personality and all that has been written about her at that time and for which she justifiably won a Golden Globe and Academy and BAFTA Best Actress nomination. The film brings out the concern of Oliver’s wife Vivian Leigh that Olivier would fall in love with his screen partner, as was his want, although this tendency did not prevent his anger and criticism at the way she behaved, disregarding her acting abilities and talent until late in the day. She found it difficult to understand the character for which in truth she was inappropriately cast although her performance showed was she was capable of. In this she was helped by fellow actor Sybil Thorndyke (Judy Dench) as much as her acting coach...

 

For me there is credibility about the relationship between the young and comparatively innocent Colin then aged 23 and Marilyn with her childlike qualities. In the film he takes her on a visit to Eton where he was a pupil and around Windsor Castle where his father (Derek Jacobi) was based as Keeper of the Queen’s Paintings. This reminds when I was taken to visit the Leonardo drawings at Windsor Castle by the Jewish daughter of a top City accountant.

The interlude between the two helps Marilyn to regain her focus and she returns to complete the film. She went on to great success  especially  in Some Like It Hot and other films but Oliver  instead of making it in Hollywood had his greatest  theatrical role  which he  then took to the  screen as Archie Rice in the Entertainer where I saw the  stage and film productions.

 

Colin Clark was born in 1932, the son of the Art Historian and expert Sir Kenneth Clark and the younger brother of the notorious Conservative Politician Alan Clark. After Eton he went to Christ Church Oxford, the established College of Public schools and the Aristocracy after which he served as a pilot officer in the RAF where he flew in Malaya and The Middle East.

 

After the film he continued to work as assistant to Oliver on the Entertainer, Titus Andronicus and other theatrical production. He worked for Grenada Television before moving to the United States to set up a Public service Educational television station where he remained for five years returning to the UK to ATV in 1965 working on documentary films with Angus Wilson, Bernard Levin and his father with the and produced for the BBC Civilization. He then became an independent film producer whose work included the Alistair Cooke interview with Prince Charles. He did not write the books until retirement in 1987. He died in December 2002 aged 70. He had no reason to fabricate the story of his experience with Marilyn especially as he kept a journal.

 

Margin Call (2011) proved to be interesting film in featuring an investment bank using deplorable tactics to avoid becoming bankrupt after realising that the computerised formula which governed their buying and selling options is fundamentally floored. The action starts when the firm is reducing its staff having contracted the task to a human resource agency that arrives, calls in the selected employee, offers them a no alternative severance package and then escorts them from the building. This applies to the long serving risk senior manager who happened to work out that the firm is at great risk from his computerised programme of mixed loan swaps which includes high, medium and low risk deal packages. 

 

Before leaving the building he passed a USB storage device with the programme he has been working on to a member of the trading floor. The employee  spends he evening  using his mathematical knowledge to complete the analysis and realise that  unless he firm is able to close its position on the trades undertaken, the high leverage  in terms of potential exposure to assets  could break the firm.  The young man immediately contacts his manager who in turn contacts the head of the trading floor played by Kevin Spacey. He contacts senior executives including the executive Director of Risk Management and the head of the trading division and after they appreciate the accuracy and nature of the threat they contact the Chief Executive Officer who is played by Jeremy Irons.

 

The solution is persuade Spacey and the key staff present to agree to off load the trades at limited losses without taking on others, but enabling the firm/the bank /group to continue to function without going under. They also need the sacked manager who had the respect of the traders to return and remain incognito during the deception. Even the junior traders are promised at least a million dollar payout severance if they are successful on the understanding that they are unlikely to be allowed to trade again. While the traders attempt to achieve the required 93% sell off, Roberston, the Chief Risk manager played by Demi Moore who admits with others to have understood they gamble that had been taken is offered a major severance package as the scapegoat for the fiasco. Dale the man who was working on the programme is kept out of contact with anyone outside the firm with an additional multi million bonus. Even though they achieve the target it is all too much for Spacey who after an earlier split with his wife and had the family dog for company, has been spending $1000 dollars a day in providing care for the animal who has cancer and who is told the creature is beyond treatment. He goes into the executive dining room to resign directly to Jeremy Irons who explains that they have survived previous crashes and bear markets, bribing him to remain for another two years during which  time they will rebuild after cutting back even further than  before. Among those who survive is the young man who discovered what was happening and has been promoted into the Executive dining room.

 

The film ends with Spacey witnessing his dog being put sleep and then digging a grave in the front lawn of the family home in the middle of night to the initial puzzlement of his former wife.

 

I looked forward to Wanderlust a comedy about a young couple who decide to escape from city life in New York and experience a Commune in Georgia because of publicity that it treated commune life with affection. I was not disappointed.  The couple are persuaded to buy a micro loft in New York after much hesitation on the part of the husband and through creative selling by the estate agent and when I say micro I mean micro. The husband is expected to find promotion only to learn the company has collapsed while his wife is preparing to sell a documentary to HBO which they then reject. Both out of work they find they are in negative equity losing their savings deposit.

 

The solution is to accept the offer from the husband’s brother of accommodation and board while they attempt to rebuild their working careers and this involves a long car journey. Becoming tired the wife presses her husband to stop for the night and seeing the sign for a hotel bed and breakfast they follow only to come across a naked man which caused them to turn the car upside down. They take a room at the hotel but cannot sleep from noise in the living room, investigate and discover the hotel is a commercial side of a commune of some very interesting people. The following morning the car is righted and they continue their journey although invited to join the commune.

 

After finding that the hospitality offered by the brother is full of resentment especially from the brother’s wife the couple decide to try the commune but also have second thoughts when “free love” becomes a big issue and the couple are pursued by members wanting a relationship with them but they decline.

 

No sooner have they commenced to settle than they find the commune is under threat because developers of a Casino have discovered that the commune does not appear to have title deeds to the estate and attempt to move in. One of  the group is certain they do have  the deeds  which cannot be found and the wife, Linda take as a lead in stopping entry on the site by “flashing” which attracts media attention and establishes her position within  the commune as a leader. This only incites one of the members into wanting Linda more and he issues an ultimatum to the couple to participate in free love or leave, Linda who has found her true nature wants to stay and starts a sexual relationship with one the member Seth. George, the husband continues not to be happy with becoming sexually involved with someone else and leaves to return to the home of his brother.

 

Seth the new partner of Linda is so taken with her that on searching and finding the property deed, instead of rescuing the commune sells it to the property developers as a means of breaking up the commune so he and Linda can have a separate life together, Fortunately this treason is witnessed by a child member who tells Linda who forces Seth to admit what he has done and his motivation which she rejects.

 

George realises that instead of running away he should have stayed and attempted to win Linda over again, comes back and fights Seth while the rest of the community adopt a non violent interventionist approach.

 

One of the members of the group is discovered to have written a political thriller which the couple publish setting up their own company for the purpose and this provides a new role for the couple and income for the Commune who are able to fend off the developers after one of the original founders of the Commune has kept a copy of the title deeds.

 

As a young man I had a little experience of commune life visiting a small one in Wales and having contact with two small community/shared houses in London as well as participating in a peace camp and several peace marches and where contrary to popular mythology, finding new and better ways for people to live together and share in a non violent way was the motivating and governing principle. However relationships between people, especially young people have always and will always prove difficult for some more than others, especially when the pressures of earning and family life come to the fore and the commune cab become a negative power base for individuals as much as in any military dictatorship or commercial business. This was the subject of a second film about Commune Life and its impact on individuals in Martha Marcy May Marlene

 

The dark side of male dominated life is portrayed in a film with the title Martha, Marcy May Marlene. Whereas I enjoyed Wanderlust I remain unclear about the purpose of this film except if the intention is to expose the harm that can be caused by a cult based on male sexual domination and violence. The film is intentionally messy switching from the present to the past in flashbacks, in part to communicate that the main character Martha is disturbed possibly paranoid and hallucinatory.

 

After having disappeared from the life of her conventionally married sister she telephones from a diner and goes to live  with the couple only saying that she had lived with someone which did not work out and she needs help.

 

There are two incidents which communicate to the sister and husband that Martha is not normal. The first is when by a lake on a hot day and a swim is suggested, Martha goes into the water naked which shocks and appears to threaten the sister. Separately when the couple are having sex in bed Martha attempts to join them. These actions intend to convey that Martha is not normal and has experienced trauma whereas in reality they may be more common and natural than is generally presented by the media.

 

However the film reveals that indeed Martha had been the subject of a traumatic experience. At one level the film presents Martha as a normal white American middle class girl who has the misfortune of meeting the lead member of a cult living on a farm seeking to be self sufficient and that almost immediately on arrival she is drugged and raped and effectively imprisoned by the group who addition to working the farm go in for nude bathing and group sex. She comments that all the children are male and is told that he leader only has boys. The group have guns and at one point the leader tells Martha she too has the making of a leader and is told to prove her ability by shooting a cult and then shooting another cult member.  She is seen as preparing another new female recruit to be drugged and raped and other scenes where with others she breaks into a private home to steal valuables. She is also shown attempting to leave and being pursued. There is a lot of sinister implication which remains ambiguous. In fairness the film may have also said that Martha was something of a rebel within her family and therefore more vulnerable to exploitation.

 

While the sister attempts to help directly the husband demonstrates another aspect of male insensitivity by demanding that she leaves their home and gets professional help. The film ends with the girl being taken to facility while it appears she is being watch although this may be a hallucination.

 

My objection to this film that is lumps being drugged and raped and breaking into private homes with swimming naked, group sex, and attempting to be self sufficient, rejecting the tyranny of governments and international capitalism as being part and parcel of the same thing. It is the kind of propaganda which some elements of the USA society will fund and promote through sympathetic media. If the film had concentrated on showing what can happen when men remain the dominant power in any society I might have reacted differently.