Blonde
From her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane, through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements, this reimagined fictional portrait of Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between her public and private selves.
- Released: 2022-11-11
- Runtime: 120 minutes
- Genre: Drama, History, Mystery
- Stars: Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Garret Dillahunt, Julianne Nicholson, Sara Paxton, Toby Huss, Scoot McNairy, Rebecca Wisocky, Catherine Dent, Sonny Valicenti, David Warshofsky, Evan Williams, Xavier Samuel, Ned Bellamy, Caspar Phillipson, Lucy DeVito, Michael Masini, Spencer Garrett, Chris Lemmon, Dan Butler, Lily Fisher, Colleen Foy, Haley Webb, Brian Konowal, Tatum Shank, Andrew Thacher, Alexander Kanellakos, Dominic Leeder, Lidia Sabljic, Isabel Dresden, Skip Pipo, Tyler Bruhn, Ravil Isyanov, Tim Ransom, Judy Kain, Time Winters, Rob Brownstein, Danielle Jane Darling, Mia McGovern Zaini, Rob Nagle, Emil Beheshti, Jeremy Shouldis, Ethan Cohn, Steve Bannos, Mike Ostroski, Deana Molle', Danielle Lima, Christopher Kriesa, Eric Matheny, Jerry Hauck, Scott Hislop, Dieterich Gray, Kiva Jump, Patrick Brennan, Chris Moss, Ryan Vincent, Brian Konowal, Eden Riegel, Tygh Runyan, Vanessa Lemonides, Michael Drayer, Claudia Smith, Mary-Pat Green, Ron West, Flynn Pratt, Scott Wilder, Sal Landi, Seth Meriwether, Darrin M. Schlie, Julián Rebolledo, Allan Havey, Tereza Rizzardi, Mia McGovern Zaini, Garret Dillahunt
- Director: Andrew Dominik
Comments
- xoxonaotochan-74528 - 19 April 2024
Exploitative Melodrama
This movie is just gross and I find it pretty tasteless. This is coming from a guy who watches the most despicable movies you can imagine. I hate the thought that anyone watched this movie and internalized it as Marilyn Monroe's life experience. I had to sit next to my coworker while he watched this movie, it was rather vile to be how he said it was "a vibe" this movie about exploitive rape and kink bs. I gag every time Marilyn says daddy in this movie its just yuckkk.
Ive liked films by Andrew Dominik and know he can do good work but this is just a total travesty. I only give this film 3 stars because the dp and audio guys did a good job with what they had. On a technical lhis movie is fine but the script is awful.
The cutting back and forth inbetween black and white was totally not needed. It seemed to be happening at random times with little rhyme or reason.
Just dont watch this.
I give this film a daddy/10 if you like this movie sorry but you got cruddy taste. - YuriyNos - 3 January 2024
Blonde's' Missed Depth Despite a Stellar Lead
The 2022 film 'Blonde' stands out primarily for the brilliance of its lead actor, whose performance is nothing short of mesmerizing. However, the film is marred by its director's approach, which can only be described as disappointingly narrow and one-sided. While the lead actor brings depth and nuance to their role, the director's vision fails to offer a balanced or empathetic portrayal of a Hollywood icon. This limited perspective not only undermines the actor's remarkable performance but also comes across as an act of cruelty against the very subject it seeks to depict. It's a missed opportunity to explore the multifaceted nature of a complex individual. Instead, the film chooses a path that feels more like a reductive caricature than a thoughtful exploration. This stark contrast between the lead's exceptional acting and the director's vision leaves the audience with mixed feelings - admiration for the performance, yet disappointment in the film's failure to rise above a simplistic and somewhat insensitive portrayal. - tonosov-51238 - 13 November 2023
The final boss of Father Complexes
I legitimately expected some Tinto Brass joint considering the absolute disdain people have for this movie. What I've got is what Dominik has already done in the past: a beautiful and inventive showcase of a mythical figure, but instead of attempting to tear it down, he just shows the blonde, as she will be remembered by the general public no matter how many "actually" you throw out into the world. Nobody gives a damn about her civil rights effort; people only remember her "allegedly" having a relationship with Kennedy, or maybe two Kennedies? It is completely inconsequential that she took on Fox and won; ass shots and the white dress over the grating stunt completely overshadow that. Like it or not, it was her own creation. Maybe she knew or maybe she didn't, but that image had consumed her, and as the years go by, whatever Norma Jeane thought or really felt will not matter, and only the image will remain. And that's what the movie is about: screaming at it about being exploitative and misogynist will not correct the record because the record is set in titanium. All this in this sombre, almost fatalistic tone.
The movie is stitched with the scenes created out of images she is known for, and those do indeed define her, and you heard it 50 times, and I will say it again: it's not a biopic. A big chunk of events in this movie never happened, but the rumors that they had will overwhelm everything because they are supported by and feed into the image. Do not delude yourself into thinking Happy Birthday, Mr. President, is so iconic because it's such a great performance. It's the immediate speculation on the nature of it that imprinted it into the world's collective memory, and you will never bleach it out even with a pile of autobiographies stating that she actually wasn't a dumb harlot with BPD who was on pills for over a decade.
Sure, there is no denying that if you're a fan of Monroe, you have a case to be angry since the portrayal of a helpless leaf with no agency of her own is indeed insulting, and for one, I think the movie overplays it with daddy issues and it becomes comical. At some point, Ana de Armas's acting turns into making wide eyes and saying "Daddy!" and sure, it also feeds into that specific image and fantasy of "I could have fixed/helped her," but going about it with this overbearing wounded puppy narrative for the last hour of the film was a lousy choice.
But I have to ask you: would you do the same thing for Amadeus? I don't think Antonio Salieri would have much appreciated an eight Oscars winning movie cementing his reputation as a jealous hack and embodiment of mediocrity. Who just couldn't tolerate someone having talent but no respect for it? Real Salieri was completely dismayed over the unsubstantiated rumor of a feud, yet here it is, the Best Picture winner and generally one of the best movies ever made; it didn't go anywhere. Oh, I guess it's the time passage issue? Or is he not famous enough? Is it because he is not enough of a darling? - dex_90 - 3 January 2023
What could have been an interesting Biopic sadly marred by being saddled with the wrong movie director
What could have been an interesting Biopic sadly marred by being saddled with the wrong movie director, that for some reason thought every second scene should have been "psychedelic" or "experimental" and that drags on for at least an hour too long. Also with what feels like a too liberal interpretation of real events, which is obvious even for someone that doesn't know too much about the subject matter. I don't think Ana de Armas was necessarily miscast, but she didn't have much to work with between director and script writer (which are seemingly the same person).
Maybe good as an anti-abortion or anti-drug PSA Awareness movie. Not so much as a biography about Marilyn Monroe. - ejnnls - 28 December 2022
The darkness is the movie's strength, but the movie falls flat
So, unlike some of the other reviews, I would argue that the movie's biggest strength is actually that it's not trying to sugarcode anything. Quite the contrary, showing the dark side of Norma Jean's life as Marilyn Monroe, is perhaps one of the few reasons to even see this movie in the first place and what could make a promising biopic, but somewhere it falls flat.
The movie is, in many ways, portraying an empty shell of a woman who regress mentally as the story progress. Like in an almost David Lynch-esque plot, the viewer is presented by part realities and part dream-like scenarios - all blurred into one. We're taken on a journey as Norma Jean practically turns into her alter-ego persona of Ms Monroe, but not the ditzy fun version known from the movie screens, but rather a dark and twisted version of that same persona. The movie is trying to letting the viewer into a mind that is getting more and more lost along the way and in the end we don't really know what is real and what are just illusions of the main character. The movie shows both the exploitations of a broken woman, but also the dark side of Hollywood where fame and glory is being achieved by - sex.
The acting is also fine, but while the movie is an interesting take in theory, it falls short on its own ambitions and rather comes across as not just pretentious, but rightout boring. It needs to be aknowledged however that it's not an easy task to make a good and interesting biopic that doesn't fall into the trap of clichés and becomes "just another biopic", and the ambition is there but it just doesn't work out for some reason and the outcome feels disoriented, and not in a good way, but again the biggest problem is that it's a pretty boring movie.
The viewer is also left with so many questions, especially regarding Norma Jean's upbringing. Shallowly, one could say that she, just like her biological mother, develops various mental health issues, but we are not told anything about the alleged sexual exploations Norma Jean had to endure during her upbringing, which could have given some sort of explanations and background as to why she acted the way she did and was so numb to both use sex and be used sexually. - NestorTheGreat - 18 December 2022
Boop oop a doop- a real-life cartoon character!
Marilyn never looked so du...blonde!
A traumatic upbringing by an abusive, alcohol and drug dependent, and consequently psychotic mother sees the young Norma sent to an orphanage with just a dream of her father, and fake picture of him! Daddy issues and trust issues are recurring themes throughout her chaotic life.
With the MeToo movement in full swing, watching the machist 50s and 60s destroy the beautiful, young and determined actress gives a weird juxtaposition between the two worlds! Her punishments are sometimes self inflicted, like her visit to Cuckoo's Nest for her mother, nearly sending her flying Over it!
But mostly it's the story of how the media machine chewed her up and spat her out however they fancied, without a moment's thought of MM's feelings, ideas nor emotional state. It's all summed up nicely when she asks for a change in story or script and the director asks if it is "that time of the month"! Those ignorant presumptions of learned men of yore are fanned throughout this biopic for the world to see and mock, and be shocked that those views even existed and permeated through space and time!
That she perpetrates the little, lost girl stereotype behind the cameras as well, specially when she calls her husbands "Daddy", tells viewers more about her IQ than her defencelessness! Very much like Dolly Parton, her one-line insights last a lifetime! - don_merrill - 11 December 2022
Ana de Armas had me captivated until...
... more than two hours had passed. Yes, MM was neglected, abused, raped and exploited, which this film captured in unblinking detail. "Blonde" was flat-out magnificent right up until the scene where Jack Kennedy demands oral sex from Norma Jean while conducting presidential business on the phone.
Really?!? You'd destroy the memories of two iconic mid-20th-century figures who tragically died to tell a mere story? No one has ever confused me for a Kennedy fan. Everyone knows who the Kennedy brothers (Bobby excepted) were, but did you really have to rub JFK's genitals in our faces? That's just disgusting.
This deserves an NC-17 rating for being flat-out awful. Shame on you! - carkol2005 - 28 November 2022
Nobody cannot deny it's exploitative
The movie and the director tries but eventually it is just uninspired, shallow and melodramatic. You know you are in trouble when the narrative feels like a handful of disjointed scenes, with no subtlety whatsoever. Ana de Armas also tries, and actually succeeds in some instances of the movie, but she can't help it when the script is so amateurishly written and the sequences don't have a real resolution to give the movie the strength it needs. This is, definitely, one textbook example of "Less is more and more can be substantially less". The writer thinks "we need drama, so let's fill the movie with drama in all places, all the time". But that's not how you build drama. You build it when the narrative needs to. And when I say drama, I do not mean tragic moments, but moments when Marilyn faces some conflict. The director has this idea of, when something of this nature happens to her, she needs to either cry or have an outburst. Literally, at the end of almost any sequence. But that does not work, at all, because by doing that all the moments have a similar dramatic weight, and hence the narrative becomes flat, and you kill the drama. In fact, it reminded of The Revenant (2015) in that regard. Why not make the character more subtle, more three-dimensional? It doesn't have to pretend to be a tear-jerker all the time, because that's very dumb! Anyway, that's the main flaw with the movie.
The other flaws? First, the sketchy nature of the sequences. There are some big moments in the movie that are basically skipped over. The movie takes a huge leap into Marilyn's life and, in that lapse of time, many important things happen to her that you don't get to see, but they are referenced later. So when she mentions the first time she and JFK "met", all you think is: "Yeah, I guess. It was never shown". Another example of this is when she breaks up with Charlie Chaplin Jr. And Edward G. Robinson Jr. This is a very important plot point in the movie as she says to one of them she can't live withouth him. But later on, they appeared to blackmail Joe DiMaggio, as if there had been bad blood between them and Marilyn. And you go again "Yeah, I guess. It was never shown". Marilyn, as a character, becomes sketchy too. For example, there is a scene when she finds out Jane Russell is going to make much money for a movie than her. But the movie never showed Marilyn to be narcissistic, or competitive, or envious in any way. So, this trait of her personality is thrown at you, with no previous development whatsoever, and it comes and goes in a flash.
Second. The surreal/weird moments of the movie. You see, for some reason the movie often includes some strange "modern" elements in its narrative. One of them are the CGI-rendered phoetus sequences. And let me tell you: they are so repetitive and hammered in and unnecesary I cringed not few times. And they are included not one, not two, but three times in the movie! The second time around the phoetus even has a voiceover!! And Marilyn replied to it. Yeah, not kidding. Also, when Marilyn is drugged some background characters faces are badly distorted using some After Effects tool or something. It shouts "lack of subtlety" from the mountaintops.
And third, which everyone agrees with: its exploitation of the character(s). I don't know why, but the movie is obssessed with portraying all the characters as sadistic, or horny, or "controversial", if you know what I mean. Take for example, the scene when JFK is talking by the phone. What was the point of that scene, other than to try to feature another r*** scene involving Marilyn? And I could pass one or two, but when every people who is sexually involved with Marilyn has one, everything makes me believe that they exist just to be exploitative and to cash onto the sexualization of the Marilyn figure.
Now, it's time for some positives. For one, I cannot deny, the movie has some style and some identity to it. There's always this sense of dread and morbidness around Marilyn, and that adds a strange vibe to the movie, something I think these kinds of biopic need so bad. Also, I was much more impressed with Ana de Armas than I thought I was gonna be. On the other hand, there are some sequences that are very well directed and scripted. For example, when she is rehearsing a scene from "Don't Bother to Knock". I thought the camerawork in that scene was perfect and the final breakout of Marilyn's character was very well done. The initial sequence was really good too. I also appreciated some of the outbursts she has throughout the movie, for example in the "Some Like it Hot" scene. The final sequence could have been bombastic and in your face, as the rest of the movie, and it was handled good enough. Marilyn lying in bed, with only her legs in the frame, conveys a sense of calmness and subtlety of a tragic event that is much effective than almost everything else. The movie has its highs and lows but, overall, it's pretty mediocre, as it could have been much much better than what we got. 5/10. - pguilhermemoreira-75-833078 - 14 November 2022
It hurts that ignorance is avoiding people to see a master piece and an actress for all times
As Wittgenstein said, "what cannot be spoken about must be silent". After having seen and reseen the film, there is one thing that deeply shocks me: that globalized ignorance is pushing away intellectually serious and sentimentally capable people (in the sense of seeking the purest emotion of art and humanity, not egocentric self-pity). To see a masterpiece, therefore a work of art. Not one. Various. And it's not so much about the artistic options that I'm going to write, because, if I think it's a masterpiece, it's because for me the options of Andrew Dominik and Ana de Armas, among others, are all close to perfection. I know that, not being really my type seeing films 2 or 3 times, I'll repeat this one for decades: too bad we can't carry films, like books, in our pocket. I have so much to say that I have to organize myself. True sages do not flaunt or distance others from the enjoyment of art just because they want to show off. As I am not wise, I will have to say what I know. Forgive me, but I do it because this indignation that runs through me is for seeing the transparency, better in this case than in others, the point where the world finds itself. It is a global film, so it may well serve as a paradigm. What you're going to read is written by someone who likes to get to the bottom of things, is passionate and has been trying to inform himself about the Marilyn topic for some 36 years and 36 years ago there was little about the whole person beyond the movies (there was, yes, the dumb blonde cliché that some dare to say is what the film sells). Who read, heard and saw everything he knew to have been written, said and done about Norma Jean Baker or Marilyn Monroe or even about satellite people (almost all toxic and incapable of giving protection to a genius). Who has seen all her films, some several times (Misfits is in my top 3) and has already seen this Blonde several times, having lasted a minimum of 4h each viewing (the film has almost 3h), because I had to stop several times in several scenes, which I paused admiring, crushed, enraptured. In fact, I believe that every opportunity to understand what Ana de Armas has to say about something that changed her life - and almost everyone is interpreting this as an opportunity to reach the top and no, it's not like that, it changed and marked the person forever and you can see that in her eyes and in what she doesn't say.
The first step is validation of Andrew Dominik's argument and realization. Author Joyce Carol Oates clearly told the New Yorker, in an interview ("Joyce Carol Oates Doesn't Prefer Blondes," September 25, 2022) in which she affronts all the tics of Katy Waldman's literary journalism, that the screenplay makes a difference. Remarkable summary of the eight hundred pages of her book. Then she says that she had to stop watching the film several times because she was uncomfortable - like all thinking and sentient beings, not because the film is difficult to understand (as I came to think before seeing it, based on everything I was seeing written) , but because the film does what all great works should do with us: it moves, disturbs, changes us, takes us inside the person who supported the greatest art icon that cinema is. So it's validated by the author of a remarkable book that I read some twenty years ago in deep discomfort (and I don't know where the book is now, what an affliction) and has always struck me as Joyce Carol Oates's Ulysses. It is a difficult and profound book that I even saw called, in one of the ridiculous articles in the Portuguese press, "light" and "frivolous". I realized right away that this idiot hadn't read a line from Blonde. And he probably saw the movie with blind eyes.
I add my voice to the author's voice. It is one of the rare films that adds and respects the book. And hey, anyone who really knows most of the quality material that has ever been published about Marilyn will find the film, in fact, the most faithful biopic of the actress and the person. And I've read a lot of nonsense, including the most laudatory review for Blonde by Bilge Ebiri of Vulture, New York, warning that this is fiction. No, it's not. This is art getting closer to the truth than any essay or investigation ever can. This is the closest thing I've seen to the thousands of pages I've read and minutes I've seen on the subject of Marilyn. These idiots even childishly interpret the "intrusion" of Norma Jean Baker's fetus in the film, when the script itself clarifies it (and it didn't even need to), clarifying that baby was Norma's aspiration to motherhood, nothing more. And only a very stupid person doesn't realize this, just as he doesn't realize that the abortions that appear are of an aspiration, making us feel (and I don't believe that any woman doesn't feel it deeply when watching this film, but also any man minimally sensitive and empathetic, and we are not talking about the option of the fetus-cgi, we are talking about the mention of Norma Jean's aspiration to motherhood), in the mix of scenes on the subject, which she wanted a lot and was always dragged into out of motherhood by the perfidious world that shackled her.
Everything I've read is true treatises on ignorance and misinformation. Of course, being uninformed and ignorant are also fundamental rights, but daring to give an opinion on a subject as a supposed expert no longer deserves any respect: then the right to subjectivity falls before boçality.
Is it possible to truly cultivate Marilyn Monroe and not like this movie? Not. Is not. It's perfectly legitimate to disagree with this statement, but that's not to say I'm uninformed or inattentive, which is what I've noticed in every article I've read about the film. Everyone, which is shocking. All I've seen is mental laziness and people who haven't even skimmed through the book or any background material on Marilyn beforehand. Even the most flattering ones. They do not like? I concede. Saying the film is weak because you don't like it? Never. I also committed this sin when I considered LaLaLand weak and unworthy of Oscars. But what do I perceive of musical films? In fact, I'm nothing, I've only seen two or three films a week in theaters since 1985. And I watch and re-watch brutally more at home. I'm nobody. Long live Marilyn, Norma, Dominik, Oates and Armas. Now forever. And, ironically, this may be the Oscar year for Elvis and Marilyn: the themed year that Oscar producers like: but this year would not be a theater coup, it would just be fair.
As for me, from now on Ana de Armas is not a person, she is a monster. Profound bow: I saw practically every minute of her at Blonde with my mouth open. That's how I'll stay. A monster.
#blonde #anadearmas #marilyn #normajean #joycecaroloates #pedroguilhermemoreira.
