"Just how ugly--artistically ugly--can we make Marilyn Monroe's life?" That seems to be the main question poised by the makers of this umpteenth docudrama on the life of bombshell movie actress and performer Marilyn Monroe. While other, less-ambitious bio-pics wondered what Monroe was really like, how difficult she was, etc., "Blonde" simply puts her in a drug-and-alcohol induced haze for the majority of its runtime, filling in the blanks with artistic accoutrements and fantastic delusions. Having said this much, I did admire the lead performance by Ana de Armas--it is a marvel of hairstyling, makeup and camera tricks. When de Armas doesn't look like Marilyn (in profile or in midrange close-up), we're disappointed (her whispery voice wavers as well); however, when she's running happily around on her wedding day to playwright Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody) or reenacting a take on the set of "Some Like It Hot", the actress seems extremely well-cast. Her almost-nonexistent chin (with its subtle, child-like cleft) gives her face the look of a wounded doll--and that's not Marilyn's look (Monroe wasn't this thin, either). Nevertheless, when de Armas gets a good scene--having drinks with Miller after a reading of his play, or frantically searching her house for her wallet to tip the delivery boy--she's more than adequate. Writer-director Andrew Dominik, adapting the book "Blonde" by Joyce Carol Oates, convincingly puts us in Marilyn's twilight world, but we stay there for unconscionably long periods of time. The picture (originally screened at the Venice Film Festival before being picked up by Netflix) is rated NC-17, which seems more a publicity gimmick than a legitimate certification. There is some sex and nudity of the sort associated with NC-17 films, but the unhappy tone of the film is passionless (and these scenes are murky with Dominik's fancy trimmings, anyway). Who was Norma Jeane Mortenson, and how much of a victim of Hollywood was she? Nobody here knows, but they've made her a victim anyway. Where is her drive, her moxie, her guile? Instead of exploring this avenue, Dominik has Marilyn on the abortion table twice, deferring to her men as "Daddy" (substituting for the father she never knew, but who seems to taunt her with a decades' worth of enigmatic letters), and being carried around like a package. Didn't Marilyn at any time in her life firmly stand up for herself? Apparently that's not as interesting to Dominik as putting our heroine on the toilet, showing her vomiting both in bed and into the toilet, talking to her unborn baby (who talks back!), or performing oral sex on the President. The filmmakers wanted to give us something edgy and shocking (followed-up by that rating), but it's all the same smoke-and-mirrors from slightly crazier angles.
Review by DiegoBlockedParent2023-05-18T03:24:05Z
"Just how ugly--artistically ugly--can we make Marilyn Monroe's life?" That seems to be the main question poised by the makers of this umpteenth docudrama on the life of bombshell movie actress and performer Marilyn Monroe. While other, less-ambitious bio-pics wondered what Monroe was really like, how difficult she was, etc., "Blonde" simply puts her in a drug-and-alcohol induced haze for the majority of its runtime, filling in the blanks with artistic accoutrements and fantastic delusions. Having said this much, I did admire the lead performance by Ana de Armas--it is a marvel of hairstyling, makeup and camera tricks. When de Armas doesn't look like Marilyn (in profile or in midrange close-up), we're disappointed (her whispery voice wavers as well); however, when she's running happily around on her wedding day to playwright Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody) or reenacting a take on the set of "Some Like It Hot", the actress seems extremely well-cast. Her almost-nonexistent chin (with its subtle, child-like cleft) gives her face the look of a wounded doll--and that's not Marilyn's look (Monroe wasn't this thin, either). Nevertheless, when de Armas gets a good scene--having drinks with Miller after a reading of his play, or frantically searching her house for her wallet to tip the delivery boy--she's more than adequate. Writer-director Andrew Dominik, adapting the book "Blonde" by Joyce Carol Oates, convincingly puts us in Marilyn's twilight world, but we stay there for unconscionably long periods of time. The picture (originally screened at the Venice Film Festival before being picked up by Netflix) is rated NC-17, which seems more a publicity gimmick than a legitimate certification. There is some sex and nudity of the sort associated with NC-17 films, but the unhappy tone of the film is passionless (and these scenes are murky with Dominik's fancy trimmings, anyway). Who was Norma Jeane Mortenson, and how much of a victim of Hollywood was she? Nobody here knows, but they've made her a victim anyway. Where is her drive, her moxie, her guile? Instead of exploring this avenue, Dominik has Marilyn on the abortion table twice, deferring to her men as "Daddy" (substituting for the father she never knew, but who seems to taunt her with a decades' worth of enigmatic letters), and being carried around like a package. Didn't Marilyn at any time in her life firmly stand up for herself? Apparently that's not as interesting to Dominik as putting our heroine on the toilet, showing her vomiting both in bed and into the toilet, talking to her unborn baby (who talks back!), or performing oral sex on the President. The filmmakers wanted to give us something edgy and shocking (followed-up by that rating), but it's all the same smoke-and-mirrors from slightly crazier angles.