Review of Love, Marilyn (2013) by Tara H — 28 Jun 2013

Love Marilyn isn't perfect, but compared to pretty much any of the countless other documentaries on MM, it can seem that way at times. Director Liz Garbus takes her subject seriously, for a start - and that hasn't always been the case.

The use of actors to voice Monroe's personal writings largely works well, and there's also some lovely archive footage. Marilyn Monroe, perhaps the most fabled Hollywood star of them all, is such a vast, complex subject that inevitably the film can't cover every aspect, and is sometimes inevitably partial.

But overall, it's a moving, and perceptive meditation on what it was like to be a woman, and an actress, in mid-century America - and after all, these things haven't changed so much in the fifty years since Marilyn left us.