Review: "Blonde"

Netflix's latest controversy-bomb is an assault on human decency.

I am not a Marilyn Monroe expert. I’ve seen her performance in Some Like It Hot, known her ubiquitous face from billboards and keychains, had some vague knowledge of her romantic affair with JFK. Her influence in American media is unavoidable, but within the wider purview of Monroe fandom, I know only the bare minimum.

I say this because critical reception for Blonde—Andrew Dominik’s painful, bludgeoning psychodrama of the Golden Age star—has generally come from a place of, well, expertise. Critics with more knowledge than I have noted how the film’s portrayal of Monroe (as a weak-willed woman overwhelmed by the toxic men in her life) is historically dubious: it ignores both her genuine talent and her numerous behind-the-scenes social achievements. This is a necessary and worthwhile question to consider, but not one to which I could give any substantive answer. Again, I am not an expert.

Historical veracity is but the tip of the iceberg for Netflix’s latest controversy-magnet, however, as Blonde abounds in concerns about the resurgent exploitation of America’s most famously exploited woman. The film, now on Netflix, is the first NC-17-rated film released by a streaming service, and for good reason: this two-hour and forty-five-minute assault on human decency is one of the most deliberately punishing cinematic experiences I have ever endured. Adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, Blonde envisions Marilyn Monroe (Ana de Armas) as a victim—a victim of fame, of male violence, of her own self-destruction—and slathers over it, obsessively and sickeningly. The kindest thing that could be said of such a portrayal is that it allows audiences to sympathize with victims of the worst excessess of abuse. A more accurate description would call it repulsive.

Blonde’s first act of psychosomatic cruelty comes in its opening moments. Having not yet adopted Marilyn Monroe as stage name, the seven-year-old Norma Jeane Mortenson (Lily Fisher) lives with her mentally unstable and occasionally violent mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson). Gladys obsesses over Norma Jeane’s absent father, whose portrait hangs tantalizingly out of reach in their home. Her father is a Hollywood bigshot, claims Gladys, and will one day return to Norma Jeane to take care of her. This is where Blonde’s facile assessment of psychological trauma begins and ends: Norma Jeane pines endlessly after her lost father, and uses all the men in her life as placeholders for an absent male savior.

Such a reduction of character would feel oversimplistic in any movie, but what makes Blonde all the more frustrating is that it repeats its one-note concept for damn near three hours. Norma Jeane runs through a continuum of abusive male relationships, each as toxic as the last. Cass Chaplin (Xavier Samuel) and Eddy Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams), two sons of movie stars, spiral her into nihilistic polyamory. Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) is the archetypical Italian-American husband whose jealousy turns violent. Even Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody), a generally kind man, ends up marrying Norma Jeane out of an exploitative vision of his own artwork. She lingers hopelessly over them all, calls each of them “Daddy.” And good lord, we get it—she has daddy issues.

In trying to make us sympathize with Norma Jeane, Blonde reproduces sexist imagery in spades. Dominik’s goal seems noble—to dramatize the media landscape that took advantage of Norma Jeane. He ultimately ends up exploiting her all over again: he evokes the lustful gaze of Hollywood image-makers through, well, his own lustful Hollywood image-making gaze. There are several instances of sexual assault in the film, sometimes with an appropriate degree of terror, but not always. The film’s cruelest scene involves John Kennedy forcing fellatio upon her, and the camera lingers over the moment for an alarming period of time. It’s brutal, unsavory, and makes you question what Dominik thinks he’s accomplishing.

If Blonde was intended as horror-flick misery-porn, Ana de Armas didn’t get the memo. She gives authenticity to an underwritten character, turning ridiculous scenes of mental communion with an unborn child (yes, you read that right) into believable dialogues. De Armas throws herself into pitch-perfect evocations: her breathiness, laughter, and lighthearted appearance can make you feel that you are watching Monroe in the flesh. And when Marilyn Monroe finally emerges as the second half of Norma Jeane’s bifurcated personality—the crowd-pleasing persona to a genuine, insecure self—de Armas brings alive an otherworldy persona. Her performance is full-bodied and committed, and is sure to garner an Oscar nomination.

The film is also an aesthetic feast. With the help of cinematographer Chayse Irvin, Dominik recreates images published during Monroe’s lifetime using a multitude of aspect ratios and color palettes, resulting in a rather wondrous phantasmagoria of cultural memory. The mood, sensorial and psychedelic, is made all the more disturbing by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ atmospheric score, which pulsates with haunting synthesizers. Not every idea works, but those that do can feel transcendent, the film’s opening sequence being perhaps the best example. As a raging inferno encompasses the Hollywood Hills, Norma Jeane is ushered forcefully by her mother into the car, where they proceed to drive straight upwards, into the flames. Gladys tells her daughter that her father lives up there, that he will keep them safe. Norma Jeane is rightly terrified—the surrounding flames are as terrifying as they are lushly realized.

Yet such technical grandeur cannot save Blonde from a leering vision that looks ruthlessly down upon its leading star. It isn’t that the film doesn’t sympathize with her—how can you not sympathize with such a ruinous childhood, media objectification, and years of abuse? No, the problem with Blonde lies instead in its endless moments of assault and despondency. It replicates traumatic images that can only see womanhood as victimhood, and does so in a manner that feels downright hateful. Dominik’s understanding of Norma Jeane doesn’t seem to extend beyond this sense of victimhood. Blonde is all the shallower for it.