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In “Blonde,” Ana de Armas, right, is fine if overwhelmed by Marilyn Monroe, with Bobby Cannavale playing a character based on Joe DiMaggio, her second husband. |
Given all the humiliations and horrors that Marilyn Monroe went through during her 36 years — her family's tragedies, her father's absence, her mother's abuse, her time in an orphanage, her time in foster homes, her stints of poverty, her unworthy film roles, insults about her intelligence, her struggles with mental illness, her problems with substance abuse, her experience with sexual assault, and the slavish attention of insatiable fans — it is a relief that she didn't have to
The dead have always been consumed by Hollywood. It should come as no surprise that the industry enjoys producing films about its own machines given how much it also enjoys producing films about its own martyrs and victims. Renée Zellweger portrayed Judy Garland at the conclusion of her difficult life in the film "Judy" three years ago. The nearly three-hour-long film "Blonde" embraces a depressingly well-known storyline, starting with Monroe's terrible beginnings and continuing through to her brilliant but precariously precarious stardom, her depressingly violent relationships, many health concerns, and disastrous downward spiral.
After a brief prelude in which Marilyn is introduced at the height of her celebrity, the film cuts back to Norma Jeane, a melancholy, lonely little child who lives with her frightened, unstable single mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson). Gladys is frigid and aggressive throughout childhood, and Norma Jeane stumbles towards maturity (a fine if overwhelmed Ana de Armas). She starts out as a model for cheesecake publications and quickly enters the film business, which is another nightmare. She is assaulted by a guy named Mr. Z, who appears to be modeled on Darryl F. Zanuck, the former boss of the 20th Century Fox studio where Marilyn Monroe rose to fame, not long after she enters the property.
The fictitious story of Monroe's life written by Joyce Carol Oates in 2000 served as the basis for the movie "Blonde," which has a 738-page hardback edition. Oates plays with facts while also drawing on historical evidence throughout the book. She prepares a ménage à trois for Monroe and pretends to think, even during a racy tryst with a sexist President John F. Kennedy. The critic Elaine Showalter claims in the book's preface that Oates utilized Monroe as "an icon of twentieth-century America." Without much conviction, Showalter continues, "a lady who was much more than a victim."
Andrew Dominik, the "Blonde" screenwriter, and the director don't appear to have read the passage regarding Monroe. The dazzling, troubled product of his Norma Jeane, Marilyn Monroe, is nearly nothing more than a victim: She has been abused repeatedly throughout the years, even as her popularity has grown and the years have gone. She is conscious of her impact on others but unable to do anything since she is prey to leering males and has a fascination for sneering women (unlike Monroe, this Marilyn has no female pals). She wanders and stumbles through a life that never seems like her own while grinning nervously.
The only thing missing from this portrait is, well, everything else, such as Marilyn Monroe's character and inner life, intelligence, wit, shrewdness, and tenacity; her interest in — and knowledge of — politics; the effort she put forth as an actress; and the true scope of her professional aspirations. She established her own firm, Marilyn Monroe Productions, Inc., as Anthony Summers notes in his book "Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe." What's mostly absent is any understanding of Monroe's intellect, which distinguished her from other gorgeous women in Hollywood. I questioned Dominik while watching "Blonde" if he had ever seen a Marilyn Monroe movie and experienced her exceptional brilliance, wonderful comic timing, language, gestures, and elegance.
Fictionalized history tamper with the facts, which is why filmmakers use qualifiers like "inspired by" or "based on" the reality in their films. "Blonde" has the customary mealy-mouthed disclaimer in the credits, but it doesn't immediately identify itself as fiction. But of course, this is all about Monroe, one of the most well-known women of the 20th century, and it revisits her fame and life — Bobby Cannavale portrays a character based on Joe DiMaggio, and Adrien Brody on Arthur Miller — with enough accuracy to imply that Dominik is working in good faith when he is merely exploiting her again.
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Adrien Brody plays a character based on the playwright Arthur Miller, her third husband. Scenes switch between black-and-white and color (as her films did). |
It's obvious that Marilyn since the first image we get of her in "Blonde" is off her behind. The film begins with a brief black-and-white sequence that recreates the night Monroe shot the most well-known scene from Billy Wilder's garish 1955 comedy "The Seven Year Itch," about a married guy yearning for a neighbor played by Monroe. Her character in the movie stands on a subway grate and coos while a blast of wind exposes her thighs by whooshing up her pleated white dress twice. Although the large throng who observed the action when it was being shot reportedly saw more, "The Seven Year Itch" only shows her legs.
Dominik shows some quick shots of the audience as camera flash bulbs explode, covering the screen in white, and then switches to Marilyn as her dress billows. She has her back to the camera, with most of her head and legs cropped out of the image, and she is leaning slightly forward so that her butt is shoved in front of the spectator as if to extend an invitation. Dominik eventually gets around to revealing her face, which is smiling as the camera cries out to Marilyn. The photographs have great contrast, making the black appear bottomless (metaphor warning!) and the white appear so dazzling that it would obliterate her.
As he tries to adapt his filmmaking to his subject, Dominik keeps peeking up Marilyn's dress throughout the remainder of "Blonde": A bed she's sharing with two lovers during a passionate romp transforms into a waterfall around the time Marilyn makes "Niagara." He also uses various aspect ratios, switches between color and black-and-white (she made films in both), reproduces some of the most iconic photos of her, and occasionally employs some digital wizardry. In other words, Dominik consistently blurs the lines between her real life and her films.
Dominik ultimately reduces Marilyn to the precise image — the goddess, the sexpot, the pinup, the commodity — that he also seems to be trying to criticize by so forcefully erasing the boundary between these worlds. There is only sorrow, trauma, and sex—plenty and lots of sex—in his Marilyn. It's a puzzling viewpoint, but it's more puzzling when he brings us inside Marilyn's vagina when she's having abortions — twice (! ), once in color and once in black and white. I'm still not sure if this is supposed to depict her cervix's perspective or that of the fetuses, who also show. Definitely not Marilyn's.
In "Blonde," Dominik is positioned so high up Marilyn Monroe's vagina that he is unable to view the rest of her. It's simple to write off the film as arty rubbish; there's little doubt that it was a squandered opportunity. The films she left behind, including "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," "How to Marry a Millionaire," "Some Like It Hot," and "The Misfits," show that Monroe's life was more complicated than Dominik realizes. If "Blonde" is any indication, her performances were influenced by her suffering and either happened by accident, fate or because she is a mystic, magical sex bomb. That is disgusting and incorrect. Dominik's lack of interest or ability to see that Monroe was more than just a victim of men's predatory tendencies, however, is due to the fact that he played the miserable character of Monroe in this film.
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