An often difficult watch that is, at best, your cup of tea directorially or not - or at worst, a disgraceful smearing of an icon for the sake of supposed high-brow art.
I lean more to the latter. I'll explain.
Let's put aside the fact it depicts someone who actually lived...
Now let's add in that it is someone who actually lived.
-unconvincing casting. Ana De Armas is a fine actress, one of the absolute best working today. But two issues here - likeness, not great. Accent - lifts you out of her performance.
- why besmirch her memory with an unfounded threesome... Or belittle her with sexual acts. That they occurred there is no doubt but it only makes her out to be cheap to show them whereas the men involved get away with the depiction almost scot-free.
It's almost unwatchable. I wanted to switch off within 20 minutes but persevered due to opinions from other viewers I highly respect. It just didn't come to life for me - but more so, I didn't get much of the tension or societal commentary that other reviews are pointing to so vehemently.
I just found it underwhelming, poorly constructed and a difficult viewing out of being non-plussed. And Norma Jeane deserved a lot more than that.
Whereas Elvis was a mess for totally different reasons, I'd have to say it is slightly superior to this one in relative terms.
The true irony will be that the Oscars are dominated by both films. Films about people from its own industry that were killed by their own successes and then were 'honored by biopics' in extremely poorly taste.
4/10
"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.
Didn't have any expectations, I know that no one really knows the full extent of her story, so my default was that it's a fictionalized version of events, and because there were just glimpses of some periods of her life, It can be interpreted as a partial story with a spot on decisive moments.
The acting was amazingly good, and some of the ideas social/personal were great (really liked the threesome line, it was just so interesting and touching, the fictionalized dad she craved to have, the self-loathing for terminating a pregnancy for a career). I also loved how she felt detached from her persona, and as far as I remember, the real Monroe said something like that as well.
She was shown as smart and under-appreciated, and that's probably how it was.
Indeed, the real Monroe had more sass and humor, but again, I see this movie as glimpses to how it was in the defining moments of her life.
Of course, the men are all bad (except maybe Whity? He at least regarded her as human, a person he worked for), but women failed her too (firstly her mom, then the neighbor).
I don't like biopics, they are never accurate and no movie can really capture a complicated person throughout their life. For that reason I didn't even watch Rocket Man, Bohemian Rapsody or Elvis, but the trailer of "Blonde" looked promising, and from some angles Anna was Merilyn, and the original and diverse cinematography made it worth watching from a creative and artistic point of view, it was engaging enough and not over-the-top artsy for me and totally worth the time (I don't even think it was too long eventually, I just didn't watch it in one sitting).
Might even re-watch it actually.
“Blonde” goes way beyond the concept of “mixed feelings”. It’s such a weird movie for the better and worse. Honestly, I don’t know much about Marilyn Monroe, and basically don’t care if most of the things happening in this movie are made up. The real problem is that the character in the middle is paper-thin and monotone, a mere reiteration of the same old stereotypes on fame and childhood traumas. It’s unclear if they wanted us to think that Norma Jean was the poor victim of a man’s world or just an idiot with daddy issues. They hint at Marilyn being a mask for Norma Jean, but did you notice any difference between the two? The focus on the character’s inner world is only a façade, as it’s obvious that famous names and anecdotes are being exploited for mere shock value. But what are these impactful images for, if there is nothing more than the same trite subtexts supporting the movie?
That said, the only redeeming quality of “Blonde” is its cinematography, particularly in how it goes for a “Lynchian” approach in emphasizing the oneiric nature of the images to transcend reality and hint at the character’s psychological dimension. Even the soundtrack sounds like an Angelo Badalamenti rip-off. Yet, there are many times even the images end up creating involuntarily ridiculous tonal shifts, like when photos and fetuses start talking out of nowhere.
I don’t feel like I’ve totally wasted my time, though. For better or worse, “Blonde” succeeds in reiterating a familiar subject into something completely new through the director's personality. Yet, the problems with the writing and the inconsistencies in tone made the experience extremely painful for the wrong reasons.
When it was announced that Ana de Armas would play Marilyn Monroe, it generated a bit of disbelief in me; Time passed and the first images appeared, and I was surprised at how accurate the characterization was; It was time to see the movie and I couldn't help but accept that my disbelief ended up being erased and replaced by admiration for the work she did in becoming Marilyn, the icon of an era. In addition to the great work that Ana de Armas did, the film stands out for its photography that combines black and white with color in a 4:3 aspect, and I thought it was beautiful; the frames, the recreation of iconic moments and images, the whole part of the camera is extremely enjoyable as a spectator. Adrien Brody was another success in the cast, as he performs quite well as Arthur Miller. But... we come to the but. The script. Wanting to cover as much of Marilyn's life as possible (and it really was as much as they could, making the movie long long), they left out the threads that linked scenes, leaving us as viewers with some bewilderment at not knowing how we got from A to B. and what had happened in between. The lack of a narrative center around which the entire film revolves is evident and we are left with a movie that is lost in the sea of information. And as has happened with other biopics, the successes in the cast (and, in this case, in photography) are diluted due to the lack of a better narrative.
P.S. How depressing is Marilyn's life, but Billy Graham tried. "I don't need him," she said.
I saw this movie together with my family, and we all had very different opinions on it. Overall, I would say that I liked it, while my parents didn't.
Their main criticism is that the movie is "an anguish", and while I do agree that the movie feels really really slow in many parts, I think it's kinda right that it feels that way. It's not supposed to be an easy watch, the movie literally depicts a life full of sadness, abuse, darkness, really makes the heart heavy.
It's not the kind of movie you watch to have a fun night with friends, it's a dive into the troubled existence of one of the most famous human beings in the last century. I found it rather fascinating, in a way.
Ana de armas is just...magnetic. Those times were I was losing interest and maybe thinking about picking up my phone for a couple minutes, she hooked me back up. As gorgeous as the original Marylin, couldn't tell the difference for many scenes.
This is not the kind of movie you recommend to anyone because I feel that it's a personal experience, there's nothing conventional about it. After almost 3 hours of watch time, you will feel really heavy in the heart, so don't watch it if you don't want to.
Review by LNeroBlockedParent2022-10-14T06:01:41Z
Gorgeous cinematography and color grading, and creative use of aspect ratio changes; inspired score; and phenomenal acting (especially of note is the child playing young Norma Jean-- both she and the mother were frighteningly convincing.)
This film is much more a mythologized psychological head trip art house drama than biopic, so if you're confused by what I just said, you're probably too simple to appreciate any of the aforementioned, so you can leave your low ratings somewhere else that deserves it... like most of the rest of Netflix's catalogue. I can't imagine the film being any shorter, especially given how it already uses its time skips-- always from Norma's perspective. That was the one consistent thread throughout the film. You experience everything from her disturbed perspective. Whenever Ana turns directly to the camera, it's Norma watching Marilyn act. The dialog can be a little hokey at times, but that's my only real gripe from a cinematic standpoint.
However, if you're an avid fan of Marilyn and know her true story well, then this will probably make you mad. I knew just enough getting into this that everything seemed plausible (I knew the deal with Di Maggio, and with Arthur Miller), but mainly I appreciated it for the experience that it was. But I can certainly understand what people might have against it on those grounds.
And a note about the nudity: I didn't find any of it to be titillating, or exploitive. Yes, Ana de Armas is gorgeous, and normally I'd be lusting after her onscreen form, but Norma Jean's story was too tragic, and I felt too much for the character and what she was going through. A large theme in the film (though not spelled out explicitly, for those who've never thought about or are naïve to the cultural context) is that of the hypocritical puritanical obsession with sex, and how Abrahamics/Christians/Westerners/Americans demonize women for having sexuality, while simultaneously commoditizing, marketing, and lusting after them. The irony is that she's hypersexualized as Marylin, while clothed, but the scenes with nudity are Norma's lived experiences, and are anything but.