Blonde

I suppose one might call it the Citizen Kane of Marilyn biopics.  It would have made more sense if Andrew Dominik had worked backward from the moment the box pitches up with her stuffed tiger inside.  This scene reminded me a lot of "Rosebud," a cherished childhood item that unlocked the many troubling memories of Marilyn, and shed light on her death.  Of course there are those who believed JFK had her killed, not wanting his torrid affair with her to come to light, along with any number of conspiracy theories that have blossomed over the past 60 years. 

 

It is important to remember that the book was a psychological novel.  It is largely what Oates imagined Marilyn felt, although you can hear from this clip that these feelings were very real, as Marilyn says she felt generally miserable in Hollywood.  Dominik takes this approach.  Joyce Carol Oates has spoken favorably of the movie, so one assumes she was OK with the way her book was presented.

Of course the person everyone is talking about is Ana de Armas, who shines as Marilyn in a way no actress had done before.  That's saying a lot given how many actresses have taken a turn as Marilyn.  Not that I've watched all those performances, but this is the first time I felt any real empathy for Marilyn.  Ana covers the full spectrum of Marilyn's emotions, so uncanny at times that you really do feel that Marilyn has been brought back to life.

I suppose some reviewers would have preferred that to be the case, as Quentin Tarantino did with Sharon Tate in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.  But then Marilyn would be 96 today, the same age as the Queen.  

Manohla Dargis considered the film cruel, and was glad that Marilyn "didn't have to suffer through the vulgarities of Blonde."  She is one of many reviewers to slam the movie.  I think most of them miss the point of movie, which is to provide us the many reasons Marilyn cut her life tragically short.  

My only criticism is why stick to a chronological order?  The movie is essentially a fever dream, so Dominik could have moved around in time.  He didn't have to follow a straight line of events.  The scenes he presents are essentially memories.  Marilyn never seemed quite able to voice what she felt in this movie.  Whether true or not, it doesn't really matter.  The important thing is that we see her life through her eyes.  Well, as close to it as we can given the number of decades removed from her death.

I can understand why many of these scenes would turn viewers away.  I don't think Dominik needed to explore Marilyn's vagina while having an abortion.  That struck me as over the top.  By Dominik's count, she had three abortions, although the last one seemed to be a fever dream.  Some have read these abortion scenes as a pro-life stance.  I don't think Dominik meant it that way.   In his telling, and one presumes that of Oates, it was part of her suppressed anguish.

It seemed the only real happy time she had was with Arthur Miller.  He saw the great talent in her, but then many others did as well.  Miller penned at least two screenplays for her, including The Misfits, directed by John Huston.  Truman Capote absolutely adored Marilyn and wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's specifically with her in mind.  What a different movie that would have been!  

Unfortunately, that hidden talent didn't always translate on screen. More often she struggled with her roles.  Laurence Olivier felt she was a model forced to be an actress.  She had talent, he said, but not strong enough to really catch the comic timing in The Prince and the Showgirl.  Here are his comments.

Dominik does provide a few glimpses into the way she was exploited on set.  He didn't cut Billy Wilder any slack in the way he treated Marilyn on the set of Some Like It Hot, one of her last films.  Apparently, there was a lot of truth to these nasty scenes.  Wilder was indeed quite harsh on Marilyn at a time she was probably at her most vulnerable state.  Whitey, her make-up artist and confidante, was there to ease the pain, which was also pretty close to the facts.  

But, this movie isn't about her screen life.  There have been any number of documentaries that have covered that subject.  Dominik makes it clear that even when she finally did achieve fame she was still looked down upon by producers and directors alike, protecting her as they would a valuable asset.  Even Arthur Miller couldn't quite believe she had read Chekhov, thinking it was Elia Kazan who coached her, as she had a brief affair with the famous director.

I was glad Dominik didn't spend too much time on Marilyn's marriage to Joe DiMaggio other than to add it to the list of disappointments throughout her life.  Apparently, it wasn't quite as bad as depicted.  She got back together with him briefly while filming Some Like it Hot in Miami, after she broke up with Arthur Miller.  Her marriages and affairs were mostly with older men, leading Oates to assume a "Daddy" fixation.  No one knows if she ever met her biological father.  Accounts vary.

Those images of Marilyn with books are not just studio images.  She was quite well-read and much more intelligent than most persons gave her credit for.  It was frustrating that Dominik didn't explore this a little further.  Ana can't quite get past Marilyn's breathy way of talking, which one assumes was staged.  Hard to imagine that Marilyn actually struggled for each word like this.

Mercifully, Dominik spares us the Happy Birthday song to JFK, preferring instead to lead us up to his presidential suite where Marilyn is forced to give him head as he lays back in bed fielding a call from one of his advisers telling him he has to be more careful about his trysts.  This was an exceptionally crude scene that no doubt turned both Marilyn and JFK fans' stomachs, but sets the stage for Marilyn's last fever dream where she imagines herself being whisked away by the president's secret service for another abortion.

The cruelest scene though is the package Marilyn gets as part of Cass Chaplin's last will and testament.  Her time with Chaplin and a young Eddie Robinson, both sons of famous actors, is presented as the happiest period of her life, but then she learns she was just as much abused by Cass as she was everyone else.

I liked the movie.  I was held throughout its long running time.  I can't say I was fully satisfied, but then you never can be with a cultural icon like this.  There are many ways to tell her story.  No reason to stop here.