Review: Blonde

Image courtesy of Netflix.

If director Andrew Dominik's "Blonde" was aimed at ruffling some feathers - well then, mission accomplished. Reactions to the bleak and often punishing two-hour-and-45-minute epic have varied from ecstatic (well, there are at least a few of those) to visceral hatred. For those seeking a film that captures the magic of Norma Jeane Baker - a movie star who combined magnetic star quality with superb comic timing - suffice it to say: This is not it.

That being said, while "Blonde" - which is based upon the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name - is very much a flawed picture, it's also one of interest. No, everything in it doesn't work - it's entirely too long, it often reduces Marilyn Monroe to victimhood and little else, several of the sexual exploitation sequences border on luridness, and its final 30 minutes seem to be channeling David Lynch, but in this case not to the film's benefit.

One key thing to keep in mind is a word I used earlier: Novel. While some of the hinted-at biographical details in the picture - yes, it's been said that Joe DiMaggio (played here by Bobby Cannavale) engaged in physical abuse while married to Monroe and, yes, it's entirely possible that President John F. Kennedy Jr. had some sort of dalliance with the actress - are rooted in truth, Dominik's film is more about dissecting a myth and focusing - almost solely - on that person's pain, and how they were used by a system that propelled them. Whether that should be the film's laser focus is another question entirely.

The film's opening sequences - which are the most compelling from a visual standpoint - play like a horror film and that funereal atmosphere never quite fades away during the entire course of the picture. Young Norma Jeane (Lily Fisher) lives with her mentally ill mother (Julianne Nicholson) in tight lodgings somewhere in Los Angeles in the early 1930s. The girl is told by her mother that her father was a Hollywood star but - not surprisingly - Norma Jeane never gets to meet him. 

The scene's best sequence comes early. Norma Jeane and her mother travel in a vehicle through the Hollywood Hills amid one of California's raging wildfires, and they are told repeatedly by a policeman to turn back. But no, Norma Jeane's mother wants to continue on toward the blaze - a mantle that her daughter will take up again and again in her life. The scene is a frightening vision of hell and feels like something pulled out of Dante's "Inferno."

After Norma Jeane's mother is deemed no longer fit to care for her daughter - an attempted drowning will do that - the girl is whisked off to an orphanage. We cut to some years later, and Norma Jeane - now going by the name Marilyn Monroe and portrayed by Ana de Armas in a stunning performance in which teardrops seem to be permanently stained on her face - is now making her way through Hollywood. In a particularly dispiriting moment, she auditions for the film "Don't Bother to Knock," gives an intense line reading, and is criticized as acting like a mental patient, that is, prior to a studio executive reducing her allure to the curvature of her backside.

For close to three hours, Marilyn suffers. She has to sleep with lecherous old men to get Hollywood gigs, DiMaggio beats her, two early male friends (Evan Williams as Edward Robinson Jr. and Xavier Samuel as Cass Chaplin) act like they are good friends only to later betray her in multiple cruel ways, and others don't take her seriously. Although playwright Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody in a solid supporting performance) is the most sympathetic man in her orbit, even he questions where she heard a bon mot she drops in a conversation about his play for which she's auditioning, comparing a character to another in a Chekov play - as if she couldn't have come up with the thought herself.

Needless to say, "Blonde" is a grim affair. But that's not to say it's a bad one. Some might accuse it of misogyny - and I wouldn't completely discount such accusations. This is an instance in which intent will be disagreed upon. Despite some ill-judged responses to recent interview questions about the film, I don't believe Dominik is playing the role of a sadist here. The men in the film are mostly loathsome and Marilyn - despite being portrayed as a victim throughout, while also mostly leaving out what made her presence so unique - is undoubtedly a sympathetic character, which is greatly due to de Armas' stellar work.

Dominik is a filmmaker of some considerable skill - his "Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" is a masterpiece, while his "Killing Them Softly" is a solid crime drama with higher aspirations - so I don't believe his intention here was to make a disreputable film that slags one of moviedom's brightest stars.

At the same time, there are some miscalculations. One is the considerable amount of time spent on fetuses in Monroe's womb, whose voices taunt her after she goes through an abortion or two. I don't believe the film is making any sort of anti-abortion statement here - the torment seems to come from the fact that Monroe wanted a child but various circumstances, most of which were awful, got in the way of that - but the continuous return to the fetal shots are oddly unnecessary. The vaginal POV shot was also, um, a bit much.

It's in the final 30 minutes that the picture really starts to slip. Despite being relentlessly bleak, the first two hours are often visually resplendent, extremely well acted and, for lack of better phrasing, consistently interesting. But starting with a completely ludicrous - and absurdly lewd - sequence in which Monroe visits JFK at the White House, the film starts to become less effective. Almost as if it doesn't know how to pass the time until we get to Monroe's death, it just piles on the misery and drug abuse. De Armas is certainly impressive in how committed she is to the role, but the film gives her little to do other than suffer.

And yet despite all this, this is a movie I could recommend to those who I'd deem as interested in the medium of cinema. No, I wouldn't suggest this film to the casual viewer or those who might want to see a glamorous depiction of old Hollywood. This film plays like a nightmare - and for the first two hours, it mostly held me in its grasp, regardless of whether I found the entire endeavor to be necessary. 

It's a flawed picture but one with a whole lot of talent on display. Whether that talent is well utilized will likely be a source of debate, but "Blonde" - if nothing else - is a good showcase for its leading lady. Some will say that Marilyn Monroe deserved better than this - and that's true. She deserved a whole lot better in general. "Blonde" may not do her talents justice, but it certainly makes you feel her pain -  and, as such, it's a gut punch.