Andrew Dominik
Blonde

Blonde is a thesis-driven biopic about Marilyn Monroe.

A thesis-driven work (drama, essay, film, etc.) is one where materials are not presented for the audience to form their own judgment; rather, a singular judgment is presented that the audience must accept. It's an offensive way of storytelling, as it assumes the audience is stupid or, worse, that the author is more intelligent than the audience: "Let me explain this thing that no one else understood, only I have grasped it, 'I am a genius and you are dumb,'" kind of like Danny DeVito in Matilda.

Blonde is a thesis-driven film, and of the worst kind, because it takes a true story and cuts, stitches, remixes, adds, removes, invents, exalts, lies, and generally modifies whatever it wants solely to present its obviously flawed and (inevitably!) reactionary moral: Marilyn was a poor girl who only wanted to be a mom but fell victim to men.

But Marilyn was not a poor girl, and though she had an unfortunate love life, she was mainly a victim of the mass media, which treated her as a commodity while alive and still do so in her death. In this sense, Blonde is nothing more than yet another offspring—and probably not the last—of this vulgar and speculative lineage, as it entirely shifts the blame to Monroe's partners while painting the mass media only in a favorable light, as the trumpets that celebrated the success of the diva, thus perpetuating the stereotype.

Here, Andrew Dominik, a mediocre director with a mediocre career who by his admission had never seen a Marilyn Monroe film before directing Blonde (???), dares, with unbearable arrogance, to pontificate on one of the most important figures in the history of cinema and 20th-century popular culture without understanding absolutely NOTHING about her, and, since he's at it, spouts some unbelievably presumptuous nonsense, like that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a film about 'well-dressed whores'. An ignorance, to say the least, aberrant about past cinema, its semiotics, its topoi, and the largely abstract language it used.

If that wasn't enough, there's the specific selection of events from Monroe's life. Dominik stated he based his work entirely on Joyce Carol Oates's biographical novel: even worse, for it shows his inability to critically reevaluate the source material. None of Monroe's intellect, culture, physical intelligence, entrepreneurial talent, or role in cinema history is shown (just a fleeting mention of her being an avid reader): what Dominik does is take an icon and use her as a paradigm for the commodification of the female body through the basest pop psychology (absent father + crazy mother = fragile nymphomaniac daughter) and presenting it all through a series of violent and/or erotic and/or morally coercive scenes towards the viewer. Examples? Polyamorous Marilyn with open legs 24/7 with Chaplin’s two sons (never happened), Marilyn goes with everyone and then has to abort multiple times (never verified), Marilyn erotic slave to JFK (never proven), Marilyn poor clueless goose unaware of being objectified in movies (she was fully aware of what she was doing), and so on and so on and so forth.

A special mention for the scene (spoiler, but who cares) where the fetus inside the womb speaks to Marilyn and asks her "not to hurt [it] like the last time": THIS THING IS DISGUSTING and humiliates women who have chosen or, more often, had to choose to have an abortion by treating them as murderers. The choice to show a disturbing talking fetus inside the placenta has nothing different from the posters and social posts of various pro-life groups. The situation worsens even further, if possible, considering the context in which the scene occurs, namely Marilyn dressed in blue in her enclosed garden while pruning a red rose hedge. Now, the "Madonna of the Rose Garden" is a typical medieval allegorical subject depicting the Virgin Mary usually dressed in blue in her hortus conclusus (enclosed garden) surrounded by red roses, her iconographic attribute. The reference to the Madonna of the Rose Garden cannot be coincidental, both because the roses are insistently framed multiple times and used to frame Marilyn's face in a sort of halo, and although the parallel between Marilyn and Mary is indeed very fascinating, in this specific context it assumes a horrifying meaning as it implies that the fetus is the son of God conceived by the celestial Holy Spirit (in a previous scene, stars are shown turning into sperm) and thus that the mother, ancilla Domini, should not dare to obstruct the child-Jesus, which means she has no right or control over her own body: hateful, archaic-patriarchal, reactionary, male gaze, revolting.

Many journalists, and especially female journalists, reviewed the film with shock. Cady Lang on Time was compelled to write a debunking article of Blonde's nonsense; Amanda Hess on The New York Times expressed disgust at the blatant anti-abortion propaganda with the CGI fetus; Anna Bogutskaya on BBC Culture had to spell out that Monroe was "a misunderstood icon" (because apparently not everyone got it), and she very effectively summarizes Blonde as "torture porn with a bit of a Hollywood gloss."

This is what's irritating: taking a true story, turning it into a porno fanfiction, and selling it as a glamorous film (I'd be lying if I said the images aren't aesthetically beautiful). It is MORALLY UNACCEPTABLE, exactly like what happened with the equally indefensible The Danish Girl. Do you want to make a film with the noble aim of condemning the sexualization of the female body? Great, but you invent a story, you don't exploit an already existing and tragic one for your own blunt and manipulative ends, to fit your thesis.

These people need to stop damaging things they do not know, do not understand, do not admire, do not respect, do not love, because only trash comes out in the end. Exactly like with Di$n€¥'s live-action remakes: garbage films made by people with colossal ignorance toward what, according to them, they want to improve without actually understanding it. Di$n€¥ live-action remakes are trash, Blonde is trash.

Random comments: the technical values are really high (including makeup and hairstyling), the historical reconstructions very accurate, the acting good, the music by Nick Cave yet terrible. Essentially, the film is well-made but remains trash.

The only reason I rate Blonde one star instead of zero stars, which is my usual score for films that offend the viewer, is solely the presence of Ana de Armas: her beauty, talent, human and acting sensitivity (and also her resemblance to the real Monroe) are nothing short of astounding. While watching the film, I thought the whole time "This is the best actress in the world." It's incredible. If she doesn't win an Oscar for this, I don't know what else she needs to do. Essentially, I hope she wins the Oscar and then, in ten years, declares in an interview that she actually hates the film and just acted in it to challenge herself: I would love her even more than I do now.