Blonde

"Where does dreaming end and madness begin?" - Norma Jeane

Marylin Monroe. What comes to mind? A fashion icon in a white dress? The ‘It’ girl tangled in Kennedy scandals? Or simply a movie star who skyrocketed to global stardom? An expose on the mental ramifications of exploitation and abandonment, Andrew Dominik’s ‘Blonde’ peels back the veil of the invented caricature known as Marilyn Monroe. A self indulgent gorge of agony and mental illness, this film’s fall from grace truly represented the protagonist it miserably attempted to protect.

Based on the novel Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, the fictional story takes on the traumatic life of Norma Jeane. Painfully shy of a three hour run time, the film explores the horrific treatment and sexualization of one of America’s first sex symbols. From adolescence to her untimely death, Marilyn Monroe was abused, manipulated, and capitalized from every possible professional and personal standpoint. A hodgepodge of torturous events and an in-cohesive narrative vision, ‘Blonde’ may incite anger and revulsion, that is, at the films production– not at the people that ravaged the shell of the woman known as Marilyn Monroe.

Regardless of its fictional nature, ‘Blonde’ suffers from a lack of depth and direction. Absent of any narrative structure, ‘Blonde’ felt like a fever dream of randomly strung together atrocities with no thematic progression. The film was an art house attempt at creating a darker version of Marilyn Monroe, but instead churned out a mishmash of unconnected traumas to… what exactly? Invoke empathy? Humanize her pain? Undoubtedly, Norma Jean’s life was not rainbows and sunshine, but what exactly was Dominik attempting to accomplish? The heavy emphasis on traumatic events felt shallow and arbitrary without any direct relation to an overarching thematic resolution.

In addition to a fickle narrative, the exploration of Norma’s apparent dissociative identity disorder (DID) unfortunately fell short. Admittedly, an impactful adjustment to her real life bipolar disorder resulted in her only defining character trait. The film was clearly about the atrocities Norma Jeane endured, but by emphasizing the duality of her mental space for each version left nothing else to be explored. There was no history about her aspirations, nothing about who she was separate from her Hollywood persona, and her only objective was to one day meet her father again. This one dimensional portrayal of Marilyn felt hollow and incomplete, and also made it hard for the audience to connect with this interpretation of her.

A couple redeeming qualities salvaged an otherwise regrettable undertaking. The cinematography proved to be one of them. The choice to switch from black and white when ‘Marilyn’ was present and color when Norma was present was brilliant. It added a much needed visual layer to discern the exhaustive efforts Norma went through to procure such a character constantly, as well as importantly portraying her authentic self as colorful and vibrant. The blurry, unfocused moments to emphasize drug use and mental decay was well-executed. Regrettably, this is another case of style over substance. Although dazzling, the stylistic decisions felt like an otherwise desperate attempt to disguise a bland narrative.

Ana de Armas is a true force and will hopefully have a fruitful career after her incredible commitment to this role. Not only looking the part, de Armas embodied a charismatic woman on the brink of a nervous breakdown impeccably. Her emotional switches between ‘Marylin’ and Norma are especially commendable, transitioning from a naive, giddy woman to a chaotic, hysterical sex exploit. De Armas did what she could with the script, bursting at the seams with emotional outrage and trepidation in the face of her traumas. Unfortunately, acknowledging her acting prowess will have to be objectively exclusive of the character she portrays, because this version of Marilyn Monroe was a massive swing and a miss.

From sexual assault by President Kennedy to manipulative love letters from her AWOL father, ‘Blonde’ focuses primarily on the men that violated Marilyn Monroe in a way that does her absolutely no justice. Painful and slightly offensive, this iteration of Norma Jeane’s escapist mentality and fictional abuse adds nothing to her already viscerally accurate lived anguish and completely eviscerates any semblance of the resilient woman she actually was. ‘Blonde’ is an unfortunate attempt at God knows what, and will hopefully be a template for what NOT to do in the future.