My Week with Marilyn is a British drama which stars Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Dougray Scott, Judi Dench and Emma Watson. Based on Colin Clark's series of books, it revolves around the making of Marilyn Monroe's 1957 movie The Prince and the Showgirl, which also starred Laurence Olivier. The film focuses on the week in which Clark escorted Monroe around Britain after her husband, Arthur Miller, had left the country...

The soundtrack release to My Week with Marilyn is a bit of a mixed bag. There's the main score by Conrad Pope and then there's the theme written by Alexandre Desplat as well as the odd period vocal track. A couple of the Pope tracks also come under the "jazz" banner, but to be honest they are quite short. Personally, I would have preferred an entire album of Pope/Desplat's music, but to be fair their combined output makes up 41 min, 58 sec of the album's 58 min, 40 sec run time.

It's pretty obvious that this soundtrack's main influence is the work of John Williams - in fact, if I didn't know better, I'd have thought that Williams was behind this score. For example 'Such Stuff That Dreams Are Made of' sounds like an early draft for a track from the movie Saving Private Ryan; whilst 'Driving through Pinewood' feels very much like his work for Jaws.

An interesting album which includes some wonderful themes. Well worth checking out.

8

Darren Rea