‘Love, Marilyn’ in New York

Liz Garbus’s documentary, Love, Marilyn, has opened at New York’s Film Forum to mostly favourable reviews. Here are a few of them…

“Drawing on Marilyn Monroe’s letters and notebooks from the archives of the late Lee Strasberg—one of her prime teachers and crucial confidants—the director Liz Garbus has assembled a distinctive, empathetic, and cogent biographical portrait…Unfortunately, Garbus delivers Monroe’s texts to a batch of current-day actresses, whose interpretive excesses (with only a few exceptions) merely serve to highlight the vast distance that separates them from the waning days of the high-studio era. Nonetheless, Monroe’s intimate voice, rescued from the screenplays and the junkets, is a revelation.” – The New Yorker

“Though it may seem a strange choice to have other people embodying Marilyn’s own words, the effect is resoundingly personal…You’ll understand Marilyn better as a result of this film, which should be all the endorsement you need to get yourself to the theater.” – Cinespect

“Actresses like Glenn Close, Viola Davis, and a fantastic Uma Thurman read the excerpts, and listening to Monroe’s own words, we hear her voice and glimpse her soul as never before. We also watch her in never-before-seen interviews, photographs, and home movies, some of which were shot when she wasn’t wearing makeup. That’s a good metaphor for what the film achieves: It presents Marilyn without the cosmetic cover of her mythologies.” - Entertainment Weekly