A Reel Review: BLONDE

When Quentin Tarantino graced us with his magnificent ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD in 2019, he unknowingly may have started a new genre in film: The Hollywood Fairy Tale…where real-life people and happenings are given alternate stories. Tarantino gave his players a bold, yet satisfying and happy ending. Here in 2022, director Andrew Dominik takes the same approach, but sticks with tragedy in his Marilyn Monroe biopic, BLONDE. 

 

Directed by Andrew Dominik and based on the 2000 novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, BLONDE is a semi-fictionalized take on the famed actress. The film takes us through Marilyn Monroe’s rough childhood and her skyrocketing career in film, as she goes through husbands (Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale), lovers (Xavier Samuel, Evan Williams), and sex abuse at the hands of studio producers and even Presidents. The film sticks closely to her childhood experiences with her abusive and mentally disturbed mother (Julianne Nicholson), and semi-absentee father…using those old memories as a catalyst for her ongoing miserable life as an international movie star. Dominik strips away much of the glam of Hollywood and presents it as a dangerous place for women at the time, making a statement on what happened then and perhaps what continues to still happen behind closed doors today. 

 

BLONDE pulls no punches in presenting a grim Hollywood, and both Dominik and his star Ana de Arms deserve much credit making such an uncompromising film. Nudity is plenty, the scenarios uncomfortable, and Dominik’s take on abortion is made clear through a heavy-handed or even grotesque manner. This could all be called exploitative, but if the film had shyed away from the assaults to Marilyn’s body and mind, it would have come off as a sanitized film and just another addition to a long list of endless biopics. 

 

Dominik puts together a gorgeous film with breathtaking cinematography. It often looks like it should be playing in 1950’s theatres, and archival photographs of Marilyn are recreated in stunning detail. Scenes are shot artfully and abstractly, and the changing of aspect ratios and switching from black-and-white to color helps to mark the time periods. The score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is excellent. 

 

Also excellent is the acting. Ana de Arms vanishes into Marilyn in look and sound, and she plays a woman who is constantly teetering on the edge of breaking down so convincingly that we should perhaps wonder about her health. The rest of the cast is also great; Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, and Julianne Nicholson. Young Lily Fisher, who plays a young Norma Jean, is a revelation. 

 

There’s a lot to debate about BLONDE in just how true it is to history, but as the character actually says in the film, “my life is a fairy tale”, and the film should be viewed as such…and there should be no surprises that it ends tragically. At 166 minutes with a deliberate pace, BLONDE feels like it goes for an eternity, and despite its graphic scenes here and there, is actually a soft NC-17. It’s take on Marilyn may not be what generalized audiences want to see, but perhaps that’s the point Dominik is looking to make: The audience reaction shows how little has actually changed. Maybe that’s brilliant, maybe it’s a little gross…but its fairy tale cinema at its most bold. 

 

BOTTOM LINE: See it