Gloomy and tragic: two words to describe Blonde (2022) on the life of Marilyn Monroe.
Directed by Andrew Dominik, this 165-minute film is based on a 2000 novel by Joyce Carol Oates, which is a fiction inspired by the life of the actress.
While the plot is loosely based of true facts, the action is 99 per cent dramatised for artistic purposes.
The film opens with flashbulbs lighting up Monroe’s iconic pose from The Seven Year Itch (1955) with her floaty white dress blown up by the draught through a subway grating in the pavement.
Marilyn smiles to the cameras while photographers race to take the shot.
This opening scene is intended a quick introduction to what this famous character had to go through to reach stardom.
Flashback to 6-year-old Norma-Jean Baker (later Marilyn Monroe), whose mentally ill mother shows her a battered, time-worn photo of a man who bears a resemblance to Clarke Gable with a trilby at a rakish angle.
Mother tells Norma-Jean that this is her father.
The girl’s birthday treat is to meet her father, who, according to her mother, lives only half-an-hour away.
The girl has her birthday cake, on which the candles were lit by a very shaky maternal hand holding a lighted match.
Mother has a few swigs of something stronger than lemonade.
These pathetic festivities over,she takes the girl through a forest fire at the foot of the Hollywood Hills (with the ‘Hollywood’ sign and all), only to be turned back by the police.
Then it is bath time, when mother tries to drown daughter.
Flash forward to the aspiring actress in the middle of a circle of stunned students (or patients) kneeling on the floor and screaming her lungs out.
The acting coach asks Marilyn: “What was that?” I wondered, too.
In another audition, she is thoroughly nervous and crumples the script on her lap. The wrinkled cover reflected the wrinkle of puzzlement in my brow.
The script sounded like something put together by Pinter and Kafka on mushrooms.
Flashback to Norma-Jean being driven to and abandoned at an orphanage.
Flash forward to a seemingly self-assured Marylin for whom 1953 has been “quite a year”.
She clip-clops in black heels and a tight dress through the corridors of the mental hospital where her mother has been deposited.
She shows her mother, who says nothing and makes no eye-contact with her daughter, a sheaf of photographs, of which one is the notorious ‘Pioneer House’ calendar for which she was in the altogether.
Mother turns to face her daughter and tells her, “I don’t know you. I don’t recognise you.”
Gloomy and tragic: I should say so.
From early on in the movie, Dominik sets up the major themes. One of them is ‘daddy issues’.
From a very young age, Marilyn needs a father figure, which is why she searches for him in every man she meets.
Then, the movie introduces us to Marilyn as we know her with the blonde hair and seductive face.
Cuban actress Ana de Armas was an excellent Marilyn and a spitting image of the actress, thanks to attention to detail in hair, makeup and costumes of that time. She even had the husky, baby voice.
The director exploits the Seven Year Itch image and a photo with her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller to tell credible stories behind them.
Marilyn is a victim. The film highlights the most heart-rending moments in her life. She was manipulated and considered a sex object.
However, it is not as if she objected to such degradation. Indeed, she was partly responsible for perpetuating that darkly sexy image.
Even so, we are treated to scenes from the life of a tortured soul who wanted to be taken seriously as an actress.
Technically, the film has punch, espcially with the black-and-white sequences which are both sinister and insightful.
Yet, Dominik has chosen to showcase a melodramatic biopic comprising a series of wrong choices and bad decisions, which do not make her a sympathetic character.
If you are looking for historical fact, it ain’t here.
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