Blonde

"I am not an orphan." Marilyn Monroe (Ana de Armas)

The iconic blonde bombshell is an orphan throughout this unnerving, distancing, disturbing biopic of Marilyn Monroe.

In fact, Blonde is an unremittingly, unhappy imaginative take on the elusive Hollywood superstar who became a template for achieving fame and losing identity. As I remember Renee Zellweger playing Judy Garland, I am reminded how intensely Hollywood depicts its neurotic superstars. Joyce Carol Oates's 2000 free-wheeling study of Marilyn helped writer/director Andrew Dominik fantasize as well.

Blonde is a study in black of the lurid and horrid parts of Marilyn's life, circumscribed by her three romances with the controlling men who themselves seemed lost in their parents' legacy: Hollywood scions Charles Chaplin Jr. (Xavier Samuel) and Edward G. Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams); an abusive Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale); and an odd marriage to Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody). No one appears to acknowledge her wit and smarts-mostly just her body and elusive allure.

Not one relationship ends right, excepting briefly Miller's; no one takes into account the intelligence under that physically-remarkable woman. The film even voices over her estranged father (Tyghe Runyan), who is never close when he promises to be. Of all the abusers, "Daddy" is constantly on her mind as she hopes for his return. Her mother, Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), descending into madness, is more a horror than a love. Marilyn says about her deadly fragmented life: "It's like a jigsaw puzzle, but you're not the one to put it together."

In one delicate scene, she converses with Miller about the similarity between a Chekov character and Miller's, Miller is astonished at the insight and imputes it to someone else. The audience becomes aware of her hidden depth.

But that intellectual side is constantly hidden by Marilyn's sexual persona, dramatically caught in another beautifully filmed moment when her dress flares over the grate in The Seven Year Itch. This display of her butt provokes DiMaggio's abuse and our prurience, neither in her favor. Dominik himself has exploited Norma Jeane, for there must have been more than sex to that vulnerable star. What he does capture well is her need for love and acceptance, denied her in her short life.

Throughout Dominik uses digital wizardry and unique angles, such as when her raucous threesome bed changes into Niagara Falls, niftily connecting her life with her film, Niagara. At other times he shifts between color and black and white and varies aspect ratios, I suppose, to connect her career with her life because of the many kinds of films she made-think Some Like It Hot, The Misfits, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes for the range of her film experiences.

The lovely lost soul herself, so heavily handled in the persistent flashbacks of her abusive mother and disengaged father, best expresses the split persona that leads her to an early death:

"Marilyn doesn't exist. When I come out of my dressing room, I'm Norma Jeane. I'm still her when the camera is rolling. Marilyn Monroe only exists on the screen." Norma Jeane

It's the real Norma Jeane who should be the subject of Blonde, with speculation about her mind and talents, not just her body. Dominik has caught her charisma but missed her soul.

On Netflix.

Ana de armas gave an inspiring performance and she really acted her heart out. The story and it's execution was a masterpiece at places and the cinematography and aesthetics were on a new level. As I don't know that much about marlyn I don't actually care how they portrayed her. The main accomplishment of the film is that it shows the horrors of Hollywood masterfully and how sometimes famous people or actors lose themselves as a person underneath the limelight and become somewhat of a lost soul. In some respects they failed to make it feel impactful and it seemed disjointed sometimes. But to see ana de armas act her heart out and netflix do something new is truly refreshing. And it's such a long film but surprisingly didn't seem dragged.

Okay there are movies that are bad because they are poorly made or low budget or can't afford good talent. This is a movie that should have known better, with the big studio, budget, and access to talent it's truly shocking how dehumanizing and awful this movie is. I can't tell if its supposed to be a parody or if it's trying to be serious. Most of the characters are poorly cast. I don't know how this is getting awards buzz. Yea! Ana De Armas can hit emotional peaks in her acting, but does it fit the character in reality? She knows what she shouldn't know. There's no real journey beyond fantasy, the character and the actress already know what's going to happen from the beginning of the film. She plays Marilyn like a naïve passive doll, with zero self-awareness. Was this actually who Marilyn was? Also she clearly has a Cuban accent. Which contributes to me wondering if this is supposed to be some kind of meta voyeuristic film that's combining two worlds: that of Marilyn, and the reality of the "film" in itself in the actress "playing" her. I don't know what this movie is trying to be. Is it a dream? Why is there so much exploitation? Where is the humanity? Its like a broken purgatory of one woman's hell. Hollywood has a bad history of exploiting people but this movie really is another level of awful in patting itself on the back. It's like the movie is having a beer with Hollywood's exploitive casting couch past.

She is a prop in this movie, her body is at the hands of all these men. Marilyn is being assaulted from the grave and robbed of her true voice. Music and cinematography are only positive things in my opinion. I really wonder if any of these actors ever stopped and asked themselves why am I doing this? What am I really contributing to humanity in this film? What is the purpose? My guess is... vanity and a paycheck. Also the model looking guys she enters the three way with in the film are not that attractive in real life! Not only did they embellish and fictionalize an affair but they made the men look like well groomed models. Films like this put fissures in the reality of the real world. We can't escape darkness when films like this cover it with a mask.

What a truly disappointing film this is. It offers us a really slow, sterile and disjointed - almost episodic - depiction of just how Marilyn Monroe's life might have panned out. For a start, I couldn't decide whether Ana de Armas was really Lady Gaga or Scarlett Johansson (both of whom would have acquitted themselves better, I'd say) as she offers an admittedly intense, but remarkably uninvolved performance. We move along from chapter to chapter in her life hindered by some fairly weak and uninspiring dialogue and seriously intrusive scoring in what becomes an increasingly shallow and lacklustre fashion. The photography does try hard - it does offer us a sense of intimacy, but the whole thing is presented in such a stylised and un-natural manner that it is frequently difficult to tell whether she is/was a "real" woman. Her marriages are treated in an almost scant manner - and her relationship with JFK is reduced to something rather implausibly one-sided and sordid showing nothing of how their relationship might have come to be. It has no soul, this film. Aside from her glamour - which was, even then, hardly unique we are not really introduced to any of the nuances of her character, we are left guessing a lot of the time as to just how she did become such a superstar, and how she spiralled so inevitably into a maelstrom of booze and pills. It relies to a considerable extent on the viewer's existing knowledge of, and affection for, this flawed lady. Adrien Brody and Bobby Cannavale don't really have much chance to add anything as her husbands and the highly speculative relationship between her and Charlie Chaplin Jnr (Xavier Samuel) and his sexually ambiguous partner-in-crime Edward G Robinson Jr (Scoot McNairy) does suggest something of the rather profligate and debauched existence that some lived in Hollywood, but again their characters are also largely undercooked and again, we are largely left to use our own imagination. It is far, far too long and in a packed cinema, I could see people looking at the ceiling just once too often. Watchable, certainly, but a real missed opportunity to offer us something scintillating and tantalising about this most of iconic of women.

Marilyn Monroe was a great artist and this movie could've been a great opportunity to teach younger audiences about who she was. But for some reason, they decide to tell a fictional story. She has the same name, plays in the same movies, and sings the same songs, but many events are made up. It's so misleading when movies do this. It's not a movie about Marilyn Monroe, it's a movie about a mentally ill actress. Monroe was more than a mentally ill sex symbol. She was intelligent and a great artist - which doesn't come across in this movie.

Ana de Armas is okay in the movie. She looks and sounds like Monroe, but she is naked for an uncomfortable amount of time in the movie. It's not just the fact that she's naked, but she's naked for no apparent reason. If her being naked adds nothing to the story you might as well let her put some clothes on.