OSCARS 2023: Blonde (2022)

It's fitting that movies about Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe are both nominated for Oscars this year. Both are towering pop culture figures, American archetypes that have left such a massive impact on our collective consciousness that it feels like they've always exist. If Elvis is the ultimate rock star, Marilyn is the ultimate sex symbol. And much like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe means many different things to many different people. The conflicts between her status as a woman and an icon, not to mention a tumultuous personal life, has made Marilyn a favorite topic of filmmakers and biographers. This isn't even the first time Joyce Carol Oates' novel “Blonde,” a fictionalized take on Monroe's life, has been adapted. Yet Andrew Dominik's film has courted controversy and prompted discussion. From its NC-17 rating to whether it's insightful about sexism or merely misogynist, people are still debating “Blonde's” merits months after its release. Despite the polarizing reaction, Ana de Armas' performance did impress the Academy enough to earn a nomination. 

“Blonde” loosely follows the facts of Marilyn's life. It begins in her childhood, when her mother's mental instability caused a young Norma Jean to be shuffled in and out of foster care. After having success as a pin-up model, Norma Jean and her agent invent the persona of Marilyn Monroe: The ultimate blonde sex symbol. Her acting career slowly starts to take off, while Marilyn suffers sexual abuse at the hand of studio heads. She finds some comfort in the hands of other men. Such as a threesome relationship with Charlie Chaplin Jr. and Edward G. Robinson Jr. and eventually having difficult marriages with Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. All the while, Norma Jean is haunted by visions of the father she never knew, the unborn children she lost, the crushing weight of fame, and the image that has taken over her life.

From its opening minutes, “Blonde” is a punishing assault on the senses. Norma Jean's clearly unwell mother rambles and lectures at her, before driving into a firestorm and then attempting to drown her. Once she becomes “Marilyn Monroe,” she is raped by Daryl Zanuck. She marries Joe DiMagio, who is brutally abusive towards her once he becomes uncomfortable with her status as a sex symbol. Even the intellectual Arthur Miller, with whom she is briefly happy, only desires her because of what he can get out of her. (Namely, a replacement for a long lost love.) Throughout the film, Norma Jean often refers to “Marilyn Monroe” as if she's a different person. Multiple scenes have the panicking Norma looking into the mirror, only for the always sexy, always collected Marilyn to be looking back at her. She resents the role of the dumb blonde object of desire she's assumed, frequently reduced to screaming fits while on-set. It was a means to an end for her that then took over her life, which saw her constantly being objectified, used, and discarded by the men around.

Andrew Dominik was clearly determined to put the audience in the head of Marilyn Monroe, to make us feel the agony she felt every day. Yet much of the discussion around the film has circled around his intentions. “Blonde” is a gauntlet of a film, two and a half hours made up almost entirely of watching Monroe brutalized, assaulted, or objectified. It seems to me that “Blonde” almost feels disgusted with itself for finding Monroe attractive. More than once, she speaks directly to the camera, practically telling the viewer to fuck off personally. She asks if she's just a piece of meat as she's dragged toward John F. Kennedy's bedroom, which is not the only time she compares herself to a product. This proceeds a bracing sequence where she fellates the president, which is shown on a giant theater screen while Marilyn wonders how she got to this point. She pukes right into the camera or Dominik irises in on her ass, after a casting agent makes a lewd comment about it. “Blonde” is all about showing Monroe's suffering. It's also about making us complacent in it, the viewer becoming one of the agents of her destruction. 

In order to transport the viewer into Marilyn's personal hell, Dominik overloads his film with visual flourishes and stylistic approaches. The film constantly shifts aspect ratios, depending on whether we are cutting between Marilyn's inner thoughts or her roles in movies. It cuts between stark black-and-white and blistering color on a whim. One nightmarish sequences has the faces of the leering men in a crowd subtly distorted. In another scene, Arthur Miller's face vanishes all together. “Blonde” all-but commits to a horror atmosphere in a moment where Marilyn awakens in bed, covered in blood, unaware of the strange man in her room. There's sped-up scenes, slow motion, CGI fields of stars, close-ups on blinding lights, and ironic needle drops. A threesome with her lovers is obscured by swirling waves of color. Dominik is constantly screwing around like this. Sometimes, it's effective, making Marilyn's waking nightmare keenly felt. Other times, it's excessive. This is most apparent in an abortion sequence with a frankly offensive POV shot from inside Marilyn's womb. 

That's maybe the most frustrating thing about “Blonde.” I get what it's going for. It makes its point in effective, startling ways. Yet the film doesn't know when to stop hammering you over the head with these ideas. I don't just mean it's unrelenting depiction of Norma Jean's suffering. As much as the film wants us to relate to this woman's pain, it's also strangely reductive of her personality at times. All throughout the film, Norma Jean is depicted as stuck on her missing father. She receives letters from this absent father figure. She calls her husbands “Daddy.” Longing for loving male authority, always denied from her and frequently tortuously dangled just out of reach, is shown as Marilyn's main driving force here. It's not just father issues though. Her mentally ill mother haunts her, as does the fear she'll suffer a similar fate. In the movie's most questionable choice, Marilyn has conversations with the fetus growing inside her. The unborn baby nags her in the same way every other character in the film does. If “Blonde” wants to present the suffering, tortured human being behind the icon, why does it simplify all of her problems down to hang-ups with parenthood?

If “Blonde” is a punishing slog to get through at times, it is grounded by a heartbreaking performance from Ana de Armas. De Armas perfectly captures Monroe's child-like coo of a voice, which she effectively lets slip during her more emotional moments. Even when the dialogue is too on-the-nose or overdone, de Armas plays Norma Jean as a suffering human being in pitiful, relatable pain. The agony she carries in her eyes, often buried beneath a flirty smile, speaks volume. A close-up on her crying face is among the film's most touching moments. If de Armas spends the entire movie reenacting one long PTSD flashback, she at least makes it a brutally human one. (Which is more than can be said for most of the supporting roles. Bobby Cavanaugh plays Joe DiMaggio as a blustering bully and Adrien Brody plays Arthur Miller as an ineffectual nerd.) 

Ultimately, there are elements about “Blonde” that I can admire. The film absolutely succeeds at its goal of making us feel Marilyn Monroe's pain. I have no doubt that it exaggerates and simplifies her real life. I'm sure she had moments of joy, laughter, and love too. Yet focusing only on her agony and objectification makes a cutting point about how women are treated in our culture. At the same time, that's pretty much the only drum “Blonde” has to beat and it makes many odd concessions on the way to that message. At times achingly haunting but also tedious and needlessly taxing, it's a movie I can almost recommend... But also one I have no desire to ever see again. If nothing else, I hope this makes Ana de Armas the A-list star she so clearly deserves to be. [6/10]