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BLONDE
Director: Andrew Dominik Cast: Ana de Armas, Julianne Nicholson, Bobby Cannavale, Adrien Brody, Xavier Samuel, Evan Williams, Lily Fisher, Toby Huss, Caspar Phillipson, Sara Paxton MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:46 Release Date: 9/16/22 (limited); 9/28/22 (Netflix) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 15, 2022 Writer/director Andrew Dominik's Blonde is a miserable experience. That's the point, of course, as Dominik takes us through the tragic life of Norma Jeane Mortenson, who would become eternally known by the stage name Marilyn Monroe. The movie's depiction of Mortenson/Monroe's life is defined by abuse, trauma, exploitation, and addiction. To be sure, evading those elements of her biography would be dishonest, but Dominik's adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' 2000 novel takes those elements to a different but equally dishonest extreme. This movie's interpretation of Mortensen/Monroe is one who seems fated to be defined by pain. She was born into it, as the illegitimate daughter of a mentally unwell mother and a failed actor of an absent father. Forget what the real Monroe accomplished in her 36 years of life, because Dominik's version certainly does—by dismissing those feats as part of her ongoing abuse or ignoring those talents in order to keep piling on misery after misery. By the end of this movie, we're left with the depressing, disingenuous notion that Mortenson wasn't simply born into pain. She was born solely for the purpose of being abused, traumatized, and exploited. Obviously, the work-around for Dominik is that, like Oates' book, his interpretation of the subject and her life's story is fictionalized. That can work on the page, but the movies are a different story. When Norma Jeane/Marilyn (Ana de Armas, whose transformation is eerie at times) first meets the man who will become her second husband, there's little avoiding that the Ex-Athlete (Bobby Cannavale), as he's credited, isn't just meant to stand in for Joe DiMaggio. While literature forces us to imagine characters and places, the movies make those characters, places, and situations literal. For all intents and purposes, the man on screen, trying to control Marilyn and beating her so badly that it shakes the ceiling, is that specific man. Hence, the story here may be fictionalized, but to our eyes and mind, it is real to some degree. Despite those occasional attempts to obfuscate certain names and events, Dominik uses plenty of real ones, leaning into this as a straightforward biography. That's the main reason why the depiction of Norma Jeane/Marilyn within the movie feels so insincere. It presents in very tangible ways the path of the procession of her life. In bypassing anything of value to this person or her life, the procession becomes an extended funeral march—with Norma Jeane/Marilyn in the coffin from the start, simply waiting for the inevitable. That life is awful from the start of this story, which sees a young Norma Jeane (played by Lily Fisher) being neglected, abused, and almost drowned by her alcoholic, mentally ill mother Galdys (Julianne Nicholson), who has told the girl stories of a father waiting for the right opportunity to return. She ends up in an orphanage, and the narrative jumps forward a couple decades to see Norma Jeane as a successful model hoping to break into the movies. She gets that chance when an executive rapes her in his office, getting her an audition where everyone believes this Marilyn upstart isn't a real actor, just a mentally disturbed woman with a great figure. This, by the way, is the only scene in which we see Marilyn acting (Others, such a read-through for a play and a moment on set, either skip it or exist to show her having a mental breakdown), and it exists as a way to dismiss her skills and offer a punch line at her expense. The rest of the story is, despite the supposedly fictional nature of the narrative, presented as a straightforward biography, with Dominik and cinematographer Chayse Irvin employing changes in aspect ratio and from black-and-white to color with little to no apparent motivation within the storytelling. Most of it is in a constricting Academy ratio, which is appropriate given the oppressive tone. However, widescreen compositions inconsistently suggest memory or dreams but also frame brief bits of exposition or the glamour of a movie premiere. Norma Jeane/Marilyn has various affairs (The key one is a threesome with a pair of sons of Hollywood royalty, played by Xavier Samuel and Evan Williams), marries the ballplayer and the Playwright (Adrien Brody), and speaks to a couple of doomed pregnancies (Dominik gives us alternatively mawkish and gruesome moments of gynecological detail). As something of a final insult to the real Monroe, the story gradually reveals the actor's in-public and on-screen persona as a defense mechanism of disassociation, finalized with a graphically suggestive moment with a certain boyish President (Caspar Phillipson) that becomes the scene of a movie in her mind. Ultimately, Blonde becomes exploitative and dismissive of this character. It's an ungainly, hypocritical misfire. Copyright © 2022 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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