By: Andrew Wing

Blonde is a 2022 American fictionalized biographical drama film written and directed by Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Killing Them Softly), based on the 2000 novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. The film stars Ana de Armas (Blade Runner 2049, Knives Out) as the American icon and actress Marilyn Monroe. The cast also includes Adrien Brody (The Pianist, The Darjeeling Limited), Bobby Cannavale (Spy, Ant-Man), Xavier Samuel (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse), and Julianne Nicholson (August: Osage County, Mare of Easttown).

This reimagined fictional portrait of Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe follows her from her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements and blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between her public and private selves.

Along with shifting aspect ratios, most of the film is presented in black and white. Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Tracey Landon, Brad Pitt, and Scott Robertson produced the film, which, after a lengthy period of development that began in 2010, entered production in August 2019 in Los Angeles. Production wrapped in July 2021, following the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The film also garnered controversy and notoriety for its lead casting, graphic sexual content, and status as the first NC-17-rated film to be released via a streaming service.

Blonde premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 8, 2022, and began a limited theatrical release in the United States on September 16, 2022, before its streaming release on September 28, by Netflix.

THE GOOD

The time has finally arrived. Blonde has without a doubt been one of the most highly anticipated movies of the past couple of years, and it finally hit Netflix a little over a week ago. Why was it anticipated so highly you might ask? Well, for starters it’s a biopic, albeit fictional, on the life of American screen icon Marilyn Monroe played by one of the most talented young actresses working today in Ana de Armas. Also, it is the Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik’s first feature film in a decade, so people were excited to see what he has spent all this time working on. Despite those good things, this film was also highly anticipated because since early press screenings it has garnered a lot of controversy due to the way it portrayed Monroe and also with the fact that it earned an NC-17 rating due to its graphic sexual content. So was the inclusion of two talents in de Armas and Dominik enough to make this a great biopic, or was this the absolute dumpster fire a lot of critics have been saying it is? Keep reading to find out!

I take no pride in saying that it was the latter. Trust me, I will touch on all of the things wrong with this movie, but with this being the good section, that will just have to wait. But for now, there is only one way to start this review and that is by praising the beautiful and incredibly talented Ana de Armas. If there’s one thing to take away from this film, it is that she is going to be a star. It is obvious from the very first scene that she absolutely devoted herself to this role and despite the fact that people want to give her a hard time because her voice didn’t perfectly match that of Monroe’s, I would definitely call this a transformative performance. I thought the voice was more than fine, and I truthfully didn’t find it as distracting as other critics. And lastly when it comes to Ana de Armas, I just applaud her for her bravery in doing some of these very hard to watch scenes that I’m sure a lot of other actresses wouldn’t have done and I wouldn’t have blamed them, but de Armas just continues to impress me with whatever she does and I can’t wait to see where her career goes from here.

Now onto the director Andrew Dominik. I unfortunately don’t have a lot of good to say about him as I thought I would going into this review, but he is still worthy of some praise. I shame myself for one not having seen his feature film Chopper, but more for not yet having seen his 2007 Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. However, I have had the pleasure of watching his most recent film Killing Them Softly and one thing I took away from that was that Dominik is an incredible visual stylist and he absolutely puts that on display in Blonde. This movie is an incredible visual achievement. The black-and-white is about as impressive as it gets and Chayse Irvin’s cinematography was phenomenal.

Other than de Arma’s performance and the film’s visuals, there is nothing else I would say is great about Blonde. Despite that though, I did like all of the supporting performances we got here even though I think a lot of the side characters you could make the case were underwritten. I was specifically impressed by Bobby Cannavale who is definitely more known for his comedic roles but I think is one talented dramatic actor. I was also blown away by Julianne Nicholson who plays Monroe’s mentally unstable mother. She, like de Armas, really takes some risks with her performance and I was just left speechless a couple times at what she was able to do on screen. And lastly, me being a big music guy, I was a big fan of what Nick Cave and Warren Ellis brought to this movie in that department and I enjoyed hearing all of Marilyn Monroe’s hits at times throughout the film.

THE BAD

Before we dive too deep into the critiquing of this film, it should be known that this movie is adapted from Joyce Carol Oates 2000 novel of the same name. Dominik then adapted the screenplay, and while I respect his total commitment to whatever he was trying to achieve here, I have no fucking clue what he was going for here. Whatever it was was truly disappointing. I feel rude saying this but it also felt at times to be a little brain dead and I only say that because of how troubling the film is. From what he was trying to say about Marilyn Monroe and the life she lived, to femininity, to middle-century America, he just swung and missed here. I will say I haven’t read the novel, and I just might need to now, but there is just no debating that this movie doesn’t work and is a black mark on Dominik’s resume.

My next big problem with Blonde is the absurdly long runtime. It clocks in at a whopping 167 minutes and I’m usually one who is fine with longer movies and one who wishes some movies were longer, but that was absolutely not the case here. Once I came to terms with what this movie was, I just wanted it to end. The film is an imagining of Monroe's life and while I’m okay with a conspiracy theory here and there, this film just takes so many, and I would argue too many creative liberties with what was this woman’s life. And with that being said, the movie is pretty uncomfortable at times and the last thing I enjoy is being uncomfortable for almost three hours, so yeah, I would’ve liked this to be much shorter.

Continuing with that uncomfortable feel, it has to be said that there are A LOT of scenes in this film that I found to be unnerving, and I strongly believe that women will have a hard time watching this because well, there’s no other way to say it, this film is incredibly demeaning to females. From nudity, rape, attempted murder, attempted suicide, physical abuse, mental abuse, abortion, this film really has it all and it certainly earns its NC-17 rating. In conclusion, aside from all of the complaints I’ve made, I would argue the biggest one is that this film is just not entertaining in the slightest and I have a hard time recommending someone to check this out.

THE VERDICT

Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is a visual achievement and it also features what I found to be a pretty remarkable transformative performance from Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, but that’s about all the good I have to say about it.

I truly don’t know what Dominik was trying to say or accomplish with this film, but whatever it was, it absolutely didn’t work. The way he portrayed Monroe’s life was exploitative, sexist, and dehumanizing, and more than that, the movie as a whole was just demeaning to women in general. At the end of the day, Dominik’s passion project is a failure that clocks in at a brutal runtime of 167 minutes.