Blonde (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Born in the Roaring Twenties, Norma Jeane Mortenson was the child of an abusive and mentally unstable mother. Blonde attempts to tell the story of what becomes of this poor girl who was sent to live in an orphanage at a young age. I say "attempts" because, as is the problem with most biopics, how do you accurately and honestly reproduce the life of a global superstar in a couple hours? This one, about one Marilyn Monroe -- other than the first scene, mostly about her after she changed her name -- is sure to cause lots of controversy. Why? Because some people are as madly fanatic about her as they are about Elvis (who also had a wonderful biopic treatment this year) and think it's got to be exact or it won't work. Because Marilyn's infamous and tragic downfall makes her life so much more poignant and heartrending, especially now that we're in an age of reckoning for the abuse of women especially in show business. Because the film is rated NC-17 and being widely released on Netflix, of all places. Because the film is primarily based on a fictional and experimental book by Joyce Carol Oates rather than a historical account. There are many reasons to hate or even just distrust Blonde, but very few of them, to my mind, actually have to do with the film itself.

Whether or not the film exploits her life isn't really my concern here, though it seems a likely conversation starter after any viewing of Blonde. We can be certain her life was exploited by men in positions of power and wealth and influence, and some will decry this film on similar grounds. The NC-17 rating allows for detailed glimpses into the sex icon's sexual life, ones that are often provocative to the point of excess. I'm thinking primarily of her dubious throuple relationship, one party being Charles Chaplin Jr., depicted early in the film, and also of her fellating President JFK in a long, extreme close-up much later in the film. Of course, in a film that lasts almost three hours long, there is a lot of time for sex, drugs, booze, and whatever else the glamorous Hollywood life can throw at Marilyn.

Crucial to understanding this film is that it's very much a biopic of its time. There have been an increasing number of biographical films lately that do their research, sure enough, and even have a few true-to-life recreation scenes, but that fictionalize most of whatever plot is present. Think Elvis, as I mentioned. Think Spencer or Jackie or Judy or Rocketman or Bohemian Rhapsody. These films, like Blonde, take the idea of the superstar at its center and attempt to explore his or her life in a highly theatrical, performative manner. The cinematography and production design are often diligently accurate and straightforward even as they exaggerate reality to make things a bit dreamlike. The fantasy is cushioned from criticism, then, by writing and editing that links past to present and future, often deliberately in confusing patterns. These techniques allow for condemnation of cultural opinions of these people (notice that all of the subjects of the films I listed are somewhat controversial in casual conversation) and the harmful, shameful methods of their respective industries; they also allow for a certain amount of voyeuristic viewing pleasure in seeing the "unseen" parts of these lives that were bigger than life.

Writer and director Andrew Dominik displays a surprising amount of confidence and dexterity and skill behind the scenes here, all the more so when considering his previous work: muscly, gritty crime dramas Killing Them Softly and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I found most of the film to be quite sensitive and thoughtful in its approach to Marilyn's interior life, brought stunningly, beautifully, evocatively to life by Ana de Armas (Knives Out, Deep Water, No Time to Die, Blade Runner 2049) who lives and breathes Marilyn. It's a chilling, haunting portrayal that feels lived-in, as though she has been playing the unlikely role for years already. More importantly, she seems to thrive in the film's intentionally inconsistent tone: the tone, vacillating between dreamland and organized nightmare, feels a bit more realistic and believable than most biopics that just hop from one significant event in a celebrity's life to another. This approach feels nuanced and complex, and de Armas rises to the occasion to make Marilyn one of the most relatable and raw characters on screen all year. It is a bit unfortunate that so much of her identity is infantilized (her daddy issues manifest often as she calls her various lovers "Daddy") and victimized (she's almost always crying with some force, somewhat undressed if not stark naked, and even bloody). 

This isn't a terribly organized review, and I don't want to summarize, so I'll just hit a few more takeaway points. I mentioned cinematography earlier; Chayse Irvin also did BlacKkKlansman and Beyonce's Lemonade, and here he leans heavily into impressionism, even to the point of drastically changing aspect ratios and use of color/black and white, to break down our expectations to this film's approach to Marilyn's life and provoke more cognitive appreciation for the story. One moment that stands out is when we're in the perspective of a toilet bowl as Marilyn pukes her bubbly and pills onto us; moments like this, repeated often, could each deserve an academic paper to explore how and why these shots were made and their effect on the audience as well as the film itself. Another -- admittedly, my least favorite parts of the film -- dramatizes an abortion Marilyn undergoes with a POV shot from inside her vagina; it doesn't help that other scenes depict Marilyn speaking with her aborted fetus, and the film smacks suspiciously of anti-abortion propaganda as an unfortunate result. However, its attention to Marilyn's state of mind, especially through dialogue, help even these scenes feel more like service to her character development rather than simple lurid points of interest for the bored viewer.

Julianne Nicholson plays Norma Jeane's mother, and she's terrifying and typically wonderful. Despite its doubtful connection to reality, I loved her apparently happy throuple early in the film; personal interests aside, it's nice to see this kind of relationship being generally supportive, loving, and fulfilling for all parties of the nontraditional romance. It's also pretty clear that these two men are the only ones who really loved her for herself her entire life; leave it to two queer men to love the original hometown Norma Jeane for who she is as well as the glamorous sex icon Marilyn for who she is. But as much as that is nice to see, there are the darker sides of show business as well. Her marriages to Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale, a perfect casting choice) and Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody in a refreshingly underused and underacted role) aren't exactly cakewalks, and her coping mechanisms of booze and pills only get worse and more visceral. As the film passes its halfway point, things get increasingly unhinged in all aspects, and it's all intentional. At her premiere of Some Like It Hot (which I absolutely turned on the minute Blonde ended), the queue of men leer at her as visual effects warp their faces, elongating their mouths like wolfish maws eager to eat her up. Her The Seven Year Itch publicity shoot in the white dress over a subway grate is shown to us multiple times from different angles and various color treatments, turning the famous image into a nightmarish visual trap.

You begin to wonder if Dominik's real, secret goal was to give us such a spectacle, such a gratuitous look into Marilyn's life -- or what her life must have felt like, even if it's not what it appeared to be from the outside -- that we remember not to worship celebrities. That good or bad representation only matters if the dignity of the person in question hasn't been compromised first. That seeing Marilyn includes what she did and what was done to her, of course, but that she herself wasn't (and shouldn't be, now in retrospect) bound by those elements. Then again, it's also possible that this was a morally bankrupt attempt at a cash-grab for salacious viewers to get horny about an old star. I think the latter interpretation is out, on pure virtue of the craftsmanship on display in this character-driven epic.