‘Blonde’ is exhausting.
The long-awaited Marilyn Monroe “fictional biopic” somehow manages to be juvenile, offensive and very occasionally well-made all at once
Content warning: this review discusses potentially triggering topics, such as abortion and sexual assault
Why? Why is the main question I have coming out of Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, a nearly 3-hour fictionalised biopic about the golden age Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe that seems less interested in actually exploring its main character than engaging in a certain kind of misery-cinema that apparently aims solely to shock and displease.
Despite its occasionally remarkable editing, directing and a good (if not severely overextended) Ana de Armas performance, it’s the delivery of Blonde’s narrative and themes that’s so poor. Rather than explore the multi-faceted life of Marilyn, Dominik is far more interested in only exploring her usually-exploitative relationships to men. Obviously depiction doesn’t automatically equal endorsement, but Blonde teeters dangerously on the edge of doing more harm than good in its portrayal of Marilyn as a victim. Indeed, she was a victim, like many women of the time were and many continue to be. But that is all the film explores of Marilyn Monroe, when she was also much more.
The core issue with Blonde lies in its strange notion of feminist allyship. It seemingly seeks to free Marilyn from her pop cultural osmosis as a sex symbol and blonde bombshell by depicting the truth about Hollywood and the men who run it through the fictionalised eyes of Monroe. It is important to express these truths, of course, particularly in our continuing post-Me Too era. But Blonde is not actually interested in the complex woman at its centre. It falls victim to many of the tropes that too many recent films do, in that it defines the main (and only significant) woman in the film as a vessel for traumatic events and little more. It is, in my eyes, an insanely tired and trite way to explore femininity onscreen.
Although Ana de Armas is clearly putting a lot into this performance, the script is too singular and the runtime too long for it to keep its lustre. The acting she does is good and transcends the fact she doesn’t really replicate Marilyn’s voice, but it’s all so… miserable. Exhausting. Demoralisng. I’d be surprised if more than two minutes go by where there aren’t tears in her eyes. Blonde disturbs, but it can never actually provide any meaningful commentary about the nightmarish visions your eyes are seeing.
Blonde takes place on a clearly elevated level of reality. It’s much more like David Lynch than a generic biopic like Bohemian Rhapsody, but it seems unable to handle the responsibility of the baggage that comes with the usage of Monroe’s persona. It is primarily concerned with this version of Marilyn’s inner conflict between her public facing life and the ‘true’ self, Norma Jeane (not the first time Satoshi Kon’s incomparable Perfect Blue has heavily inspired a major Hollywood production). Perhaps it’s supposed to be hard to differentiate between the two ‘identities’, but Blonde treads the same ground so many times over in so many different ways, looping the same miserable beats over and over again that it all collapses in on itself. de Armas is not directed well enough to allow a full sense of distinction between those two different versions of Marilyn, her admittedly dedicated performance becoming increasingly one-note and shallow as the film progresses.
It’s so particularly draining because of how Blonde’s shallow depiction of Marilyn scarcely changes over the immense runtime. There is scarcely ever a man out of frame, of which she often relies on because of daddy issues set up earlier in the film. In her calling all of them ‘daddy’ and the constant tears in her eyes, it intrinsically communicates to us that our protagonist is helpless to change her scenario as she is constantly violated by men and reduced to a crying, baby-talking victim. Monroe’s actual career takes a total backseat in service of dogpiling awful events that actually happened — and a whole lot of made up things that didn’t — onto her, only to culminate in her eventual demise. Seemingly, the most interesting thing about Marilyn to Dominik is just that — her inevitable end. As a result, Blonde is not a meaningful exploration of a life, but the shallow anticipation of a death.
Granted, I’ve not read the eponymous Joyce Carol Oates novel upon which Blonde is based, and I’ve heard it’s very accurate to that book (which does make me question the content of that also). But it certainly doesn’t help that Dominik chooses to depict many of the film’s most shocking moments in a juvenile and crass manner. The most egregious example is the seemingly anti-abortion message that Blonde broadcasts regardless of intention, of which much has already been said. In an already unpleasant experience, I found the way Marilyn’s pregnancies were displayed in particularly poor taste. Dominik has insisted the film is pro-choice, that the scene where a fetus pleads for its life is only garnering controversy due to our current political moment in the wake of Roe v Wade’s overturning.
That brings us to more whys: why, then, does Dominik feel the need to show how alive and human the fetuses that Marilyn is about to abort are? Why does he depict both abortions Marilyn has as so violent and invasive? How they both seem to be so utterly against her will as the doctors unsympathetically perform the operation even with her begging and pleading to stop? Even if humanising fetuses by showing them nearly full formed floating in the womb or giving them voices to guilt Marilyn is a way to showcase her fracturing mental state (a poor excuse, may I add), I find the depictions of abortion in Blonde irresponsible at best and reprehensible at worst, no matter the intention. Perhaps the overturning of Roe v Wade is influencing the particular backlash the film is receiving for this right now, but it’s still an unbelievably awful way to depict abortion on screen as a process women have no control over, when in reality it’s the opposite that is true.
Its other more shocking moments are also shot and directed with similar carelessness. There are several scenes of sexual assault, with one of these scenes having a particularly uncomfortable POV shot that makes the camera leer at Marilyn, despite the film ostensibly trying its best to discomfort you. The male gaze is all over Blonde, even when it tries to critique it. Rarely have I seen a film so spectacularly counter itself as it makes depicting exploitation of women in Hollywood feel in of itself exploitative with zero introspection.
It’s all the more absurd when the film chooses to recreate some of the most iconic Marilyn Monroe moments with staggering accuracy to their real-life, historical counterparts. If the film is supposed to be a fictionalisation of Monroe’s life, one that plays awfully loose with the facts like its source material, then this extremely historical approach to recreation is at odds with what Blonde is trying to achieve. The ever-changing aspect ratios are there to replicate photos of Marilyn we have, and yet the film presents a pastiche of that person.
That ties into my last major criticism: that Blonde doesn’t even feel like it needs to be about Marilyn Monroe. The film aims to more broadly tell a story about childhood trauma, fame and isolation by using a pop culture icon. But its non-specificity to the life of Marilyn or Norma Jeane calls into question its very reason for being, that imagery seemingly only used as power for an often boring and extremely careless exploration of femininity, with Marilyn’s life eventually chalked up to far less than the sum of its parts. As an exploration of fame, femininity or family, the film fails on every level.
Blonde is exhausting. It’s hard to watch, interchangeably due to its crassness and frequent dullness. Most of all though, despite wanting to ‘free’ one of history’s most recognisable and beloved women, it treats her as nothing more than a canvas that sports only the colours of trauma, and I think it’s safe to say that Dominik is a reckless painter who treats his subject with little respect. Which brings us to one last why, one that I can answer: why bother with Blonde? Don’t.
2/10
