Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy revealed at Venice Film Festival

by time news

Based on the novel Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, Andrew Dominik’s film is an almost three-hour biopic about the life of a 1950s sex symbol. August 4 marks the 60th anniversary of Monroe’s death. Among the producers of the project is Brad Pitt.

It all starts from childhood, when a little girl Norma (real name Marilyn) becomes an unwitting victim of a mentally unstable mother suffering from schizophrenia. She does not know her father. Only on her birthday, the mother will surprise her in the form of his photograph. Since then, the image of the father will accompany Norma throughout her short life, which ended at 32 years old.

The viewer observes Marilyn’s career, which began with candid photographs in magazines, participation in porn films, dubious relationships with producers who were attracted by her beauty and were surprised by conversations. For example, about Dostoevsky: “Seriously? Have you read it?” She remained for many a stupid blonde. With her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, she talked about Chekhov’s Natasha from The Three Sisters.

Her three failed pregnancies are presented as a plastic embryo that haunts Marilyn’s terrifying visions. In all its glory, the scene on the ventilation grill of the New York subway, where Marilyn stands in a white flowing dress during the filming of The Seven Year Itch, which gathered thousands of onlookers, is presented in all its glory. This frame has been replicated and reproduced in the most unexpected places, as, for example, in Kursk in front of a shopping center. All stereotypes and conjectures are collected together.

The main role was played by the now 34-year-old Cuban actress Ana de Armas, who began her career in Spain and then continued it in the United States. Her choice for the role was not so obvious, but the director caught something necessary, noticing in another picture, and achieved an external and internal resemblance to Monroe, as we imagine her. The actress had to practice speech for nine months in order to reproduce the features of her heroine’s speech.

The playwright and intellectual Arthur Miller was played by Adrien Brody, and here the portrait resemblance is more obvious. Other key characters also have it, including John F. Kennedy, played by Danish actor Caspar Fillpson. His appearance is almost caricatured.

The half-naked President of the United States lies on the bed. In the next room, his guard is on duty, reading a newspaper. Monroe fulfills all his sexual desires, and Kennedy continues to have an important telephone conversation. At this time, shots of a rocket taking off into space appear on the screen. “Come on, baby,” Kennedy encourages her beloved. Skeptics may refute the likelihood of such a meeting.

Monroe lives in an imaginary world, partly following the path of his mother, plunging into a state of insanity. As they say, take good care of your parents. Their ailments and behavior will someday come to you.

Tilda Swinton, who came to Venice to present Joanna Hogg’s Eternal Daughter, where she played a mother and daughter who are constantly present in the same frame, correctly noted: “This idea excites many people. To what extent our mothers are our projection, and to what extent our daughters become its reflection. Swinton played a director who came with an elderly mother to an old castle to write a script about the two of them. But things don’t go until irreversible and mysterious events take place in this damned place, as if inhabited by ghosts.

Frame from the film “Son”.







Another picture of the competition program, “Son” by Florian Zeller, continues the theme set by the curators. The film is based on the play of the same name by this famous theatrical playwright and director about an ancient Greek tragedy that happened in one quite ordinary family. Her father leaves her, leaving a small child behind. He has another and a young woman. Nothing special if you don’t know the consequences.

Hugh Jackman played the main role of the father. We know that he is a great actor, but in the role of Peter, he showed himself to be a great master. The hero could not even imagine what injury he caused to his young son. At the age of 17, his psyche is broken, and this is an irreversible process. The depressive guy was played by young actor Zen McGrath, who still lacks purely professional skills and depth, but he is type-perfect.

Especially for Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for their previous joint film Father, Zeller came up with the role of Peter’s father. In the past, he is a hunter, always disappearing somewhere, not devoting much time to his son. But the son gave him a light. As they say in such cases, your children will avenge the insults you inflicted on their parents.

Hopkins’ hero seems to appear on the screen for a few minutes to give his adult son advice: let’s all go far, far away, let go of the situation. But this number won’t work. As in many other films of the competition, in “Son” reality and dream merge so closely that sometimes it is not clear where is fiction and where is reality. The picture made such a strong impression on many that people ran to hug their children.

Another film made by another famous theater director and playwright Martin McDonagh, very popular in Russia, is Banshee Insherina. His films “Low Down in Bruges” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” testify to the ability to think cinematically, and this is not always the case with theater people.

The action of his new picture takes place in 1923 on an Irish island, similar to the one where the director himself spent his childhood. The nature there is majestic and harsh, and the feeling is that everything happens in a very closed space. Actually, we see the house of the hero, who lives in the same room with his sister and a donkey, a pub where the whole village gathers, and the seashore. People live far from the big world, and there is a civil war going on, which only flashes in the sky remind of. But they have their own war.

The two friends stop talking for no apparent reason. It’s just that one of them, played by Brendan Gleeson, doesn’t want to talk for some reason. And the second – Colin Farrell – cannot accept it, tries to get to the bottom of it.

In response to his every attempt to invade his life, a former friend cuts off his finger. One of them, like poison, will lead to the death of a donkey, and this will touch a callous heart much more strongly. The duet of Gleason and Farrell is brilliant, and they are trying to figure out inexplicable things, very subtle matters. Everything is impeccable, except that the feeling of some theatrical intimacy does not leave, as if we are in a theater that is in the bosom of nature. This is practiced in the world and has a great effect.

You may also like

Leave a Comment