“In the cinema they cut you into pieces. Cut, cut, cut. It’s a puzzle. But not the one who puts the pieces together. Oh, but living the role. Just being in it until the curtain comes down every night…”. That’s what Marilyn Monroe says to baseball player Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannabella) on their first date, as imagined by director Andrew Dominick in “Blonde” on Netflix. This description can also be heard as an apologetic for Ana de Armas who plays Marilyn. I would like to say that she is excellent, and that she disappears into the role, which is true, but her character has no dramatic arc. She broke a vessel from the beginning of the film to the end, so it is not clear how she became such a big star, and how she survived beyond the age of 16.
The last hour of “Blonde” (out of almost three), in which Marilyn is repeatedly photographed naked, evoked in me an association with making schnitzel. Dominic like picked a choice piece of chicken breast, and pounded it with a heavy hammer until it flattened thinly, almost transparently. Then he coated it in gossip crumbs and deep-fried it until charred.
The semi-imagined biography of the Hollywood icon from the 1950s was created out of the me too era, so one of the early images is of the blonde in the title being raped from behind by some producer. But this is not a feminist film in any way, because it presents its heroine as a trampled Scoopa, almost without a will of her own. In the same scene I mentioned above she also says that she wants to learn “serious acting” but the film for a moment does not take her seriously as an actress. There is not a single scene where we see her preparing for one of the wonderful performances she left behind, as if everything – the humor, the emotion, the seduction – came to her by chance.
We do see some iconic scenes from her most famous movies – “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” from “Men Prefer Blondes”, “I want to be loved by you” from “Hot and Tasty”, and of course the flapping of the dress from “Sin on the Doorstep of Your House” ” – and it’s clear that meticulous work went into the perfect accuracy of these passages. But the work is not Marilyn’s, but the costume and set designers and the photographer. In general, the choice of only these moments creates the impression that Dominic, who also wrote the script, does not know Marilyn Monroe’s film repertoire beyond the popular highlights. This is how he created a film that does not respect his heroine, and the more it goes on and spreads, the more annoying it is.
“Blonde” is based on the celebrated novel by Joyce Carol Oates, in which the author took creative liberties. The figure of the father Marilyn never got to know hovers over the entire film, and she seems to be looking for him in every man she meets. On the other hand, she longs for a baby of her own to fill the void. These two passions are imported into the film from Marilyn’s songs – “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” and “Bye Bye Baby”, which take on a new meaning here. Dominique penetrates repeatedly into her womb, in which no fetus manages to grow to maturity. At one point he even films an artificial abortion from inside the womb. This gives the film not only a pornographic dimension, but also a layer of horror, accompanied by casual and annoying music.
“Blonde” does progress chronologically – from a difficult childhood in the company of an unstable mother to death – but it is completely disintegrated, from an artistic concept that did not succeed. The attempt to escape the television mold of celebrity biographies is admirable, but the Australian Dominic, who excelled at deconstructing the masculinity of his heroes in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and “Killing Me Softly”, does not know how to deal with the character of The woman who became the ultimate image of femininity.
So the film moves between color and black and white and overwhelms it with aggressive images that present Marilyn’s life as an ongoing nightmare. Through the invasion into her womb the film tries to peek into her mind, but we are left with the invasive and gross images. It reaches a particularly repulsive climax in her encounter with the president’s cock, during which she sucks it while Kennedy talks on the phone about sexually harassing other women, and the television shows phallic images from an old MDB movie.
Only with her third husband, the playwright Arthur Miller (the first is not mentioned at all in the film), there is a dramatic arc and chemistry, and some beautiful moments. Adrien Brody was upset for the role, and this is also a rude choice because despite the yellow nicknames that stuck to their relationship Miller was a handsome man. But the moment when Marilyn surprises the celebrated playwright with an apt diagnosis about a character he’s written produces an emotional response that jumpstarts a compelling relationship, if only for a short time.
Finally, I would like to return to Ana de Armas, who seems to have put her whole soul into the role. She does an excellent impersonation of Marilyn, so much so that it doesn’t look like an impersonation, and there is no trace of her original Cuban accent. If only she had been given the opportunity to “live the role”, as she requests in the film, she would surely have succeeded in shaping a complete and truly touching character, instead of a broken vessel that evokes cold pity.
2 stars. Blonde directed by: Andrew Dominick. With Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannabella. USA 2022, 166 min.