Movies
Blonde: An Offensive Depiction of Marilyn Monroe
“Please don’t make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe. I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one. I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity.” — Marilyn Monroe
Blonde is a vulgar, ridiculously pretentious and grotesquely cruel slo-mo prestige camp disaster. It is one of the most bizarre misfires my eyes have seen in years. It’s a heartbreaking odyssey through the cruel life of one of Hollywood’s golden girls, Norma Jeane Mortenson, famously known as Marilyn Monroe.
It just goes to show you could have it all; fame, money, your pictures on magazines and have many people proclaim their love for you, but in reality none of them actually care for you. There are glimmers of greatness in this mess, but Andrew Dominik’s fictional take of Marilyn Monroe’s psychological trauma feels so misguided both from a creative and story perspective.
Let’s start with what works about the film. It should come to no one’s surprise that Ana de Armas is incredible here. She perfectly embodies Norma Jeane and truly becomes her, although I still noticed her real accent slipped at times.
Accompanying her performance is the haunting score that is implemented sparingly. Immaculate editing and visuals all lead to a completely immersive experience. There are some really effective moments in this film, particularly in scenes that showcase the personality split of Marilyn and Norma Jeane beautifully, all carried by the visuals, camerawork, and performance. It’s only in those moments where the film really shines. Sadly, my praise mostly stops there.
I don’t understand who Blonde is supposed to be for. It’s too abstract and raunchy to reach. What I think speaks volumes is how little I have to say after watching this for almost three hours. It teaches nothing to anyone who wants to learn about Marilyn. All I got out of it is that Marilyn suffered in every way imaginable. I didn’t learn anything about who she was, only that she was depressed and desperate for a father figure and that’s about it. She’s an utterly passive punching bag here. We never see Marilyn in any context other than misery.
It’s an undeniable fact that this is a deeply exploitative picture, filled with sexualization and drenched in the male gaze. It contains many triggers that are badly handled and made sensationalized just for views. This film completely threw away Norma Jeane’s dreams, integrity as an artist, aspirations, hobbies, interests and intellect, and hyper focused on her sexual assault and her sexual life.
There are shots of her sleeping with the President which never got disclosed as anything other than a rumor so I don’t know why Dominik felt the need to include such a thing. We’ve got point of view shots of so much unnecessary nudity and sexual scenes. She’s sexualized beyond belief. It’s shocking how anti-feminist this film is. A woman who endured such hardship deserves peace and patience but her legacy is being dissected and displayed for all to see. Not only was this an entirely pornographic take on her life, they filmed in the exact location where she took her own life. They recreated her death. In the same exact spot she died. Nothing has ever felt more distasteful.
There are ways to do films about people who were exploited and abused without further exploiting them. Take a film like Pablo Larráin’s Spencer, which is very stylistic and psychological, but respects the life and legacy of Diana and shows what made her truly special and the things in her life which she held dearest and made her happy, all while still juggling that with her psychosis. The same goes for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. Both show their protagonists being used and abused by people who bring them nothing but hurt, but what Diana and Elvis, respectively, are allowed is agency, joy and depth.
Blonde never takes this approach. Even worse, it feels like a two hour, forty minute soft porn and a montage of absolute misery, just exploiting Marilyn and using her as a tool in a misconceived character study. She is nothing but a prop in this film to be passed from one tragedy to another. The film has an excessive need to constantly beat her down at every turn, with no real glimmers of happiness or positivity of any kind.
This is truly a waste of Ana de Armas and an insult to Marilyn’s memory. It is an utterly confounding piece of biographical fiction that is disrespectful to its subject and paints Marilyn Monroe in such a miserable light. There are times when it really shines, and Ana de Armas is truly marvelous, but this film is a pretty big mess as a whole.
What could have been an exploration of exploitation is just another entry of exploitation, making this one of the most cruelly ironic films ever made. She deserved better than this substance-less biopic. I encourage everyone to watch Marilyn’s films instead.
