Andrew Dominik doesn't seem like a filmmaker that compromises for anything. He hasn't made a lot of films, but it appears he always makes the movie he wants to make. His latest, "Blonde," has been the subject of a great deal of online chatter - a side effect of today's movie going - surrounding its depiction of Marilyn Monroe. A lot of the concerns have proven to have merit because "Blonde" is a challenging endurance test of a movie.
Based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates, "Blonde" is a fictional portrayal of Norma Jeane, who would go on to become the famous Marilyn Monroe. As the movie opens, young Norma Jean (Lily Fisher) is living with her abusive mother (Julianne Nicholson) and forced to flee the California wildfires. This sets the stage for a movie about a woman who endured various forms of abuse her entire life and was rarely given the chance she deserved.
Ana de Armas plays Norma Jeane as an adult and she's the guiding emotional force throughout Dominik's near-three-hour film, which rarely justifies its length (to be fair, Oates' novel is 800-plus pages). The movie takes us through Norma Jeane's life as she tries to make her way in show business, desperately trying to be taken seriously as an actress, but always seen as nothing but a sexy pin-up. Norma Jeane rejects the Marilyn Monroe persona, and de Armas' performance emphasizes the burden of being someone famous who was so deeply objectified. She wants to perform as Norma Jeane, but Marilyn Monroe is a ghost that continually haunts her.
"Blonde" is a frustrating movie because every inhalation and exhalation, every glance, and every word spoken by de Armas is heartbreaking and haunting but the movie doesn't match her. Marilyn Monroe - who died of an overdose at 36 years old - was treated poorly by just about everyone in her life, from her mother, to Hollywood, to her husbands (Bobby Cannavale plays Joe DiMaggio and Adrien Brody plays Arthur Miller). The maddening part about her treatment is that she continually delivered in the movies she was in, from Billy Wilder's "Some Like it Hot" to "Gentleman Prefer Blondes." She had a radiant screen presence, but Hollywood only saw her figure.
Dominik doesn't treat Marilyn Monroe any better, with his leering camera and fixation on the abuse she endured. "Blonde" has been slapped with a NC-17 rating, which rarely happens these days, because Dominik revels in showing Marilyn Monroe being sexually abused or performing different sexual acts. The depiction isn't the issue; it's entirely that these scenes - often quite gratuitous - feel like the reason this movie exists. Would Dominik have wanted to make a movie about Marilyn Monroe if he couldn't weave shocking moments of abuse into it? There's rarely a moment that suggests that's the case.
"Blonde" is an impossible movie to recommend, but it should be seen for some of the year's strongest work in de Armas' performance. On the technical side, Dominik has assembled a fine team, including Chayse Irvin's lush cinematography and Florencia Martin's production design; everyone has created a dazzling old Hollywood.
"Blonde" shouldn't have been a sugar coated Hollywood fairytale because that wasn't Marilyn Monroe's life, but Dominik's fictional account of her career isn't the right way to tell her story either. The cruelty seems to be the point of "Blonde," which makes a meandering three-hour movie a tough sell.
"Blonde" is currently in limited theatrical release and will debut on Netflix on September 28th.
Blonde Movie Review By Matthew Passantino
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