Blonde

Venice Film Festival #26 - Sala Grande

This movie could’ve been incredible.

I don’t think I’ve ever left a film feeling so conflicted after watching it, and with some time removed from the screening those feelings have become a bit clearer, and sadly they’re not positive.

Part of me thinks this deserves 5 stars, namely the performance from Ana De Armas. I mean she’s magnificent in the film. The film doesn’t ever lift its foot of the acceleration when it comes to the graphic and horrific experiences Monroe went through throughout her life and De Armas is able to channel the pain and torment Monroe went through with such compassion and realism that it’s at times hard to watch. It feels very much like the direction for her was “Ana, just keep crying” and she executes this perfectly. Often crying in film can feel forced or unnatural but somehow she’s balling her eyes out for most of the film and you feel every inch of sadness exuding from her.

As the film documents Monroe’s life she’s never really surrounded by the same people for that long, meaning that the supporting cast doesn’t really get a moment to shine but everyone else is brilliant. Adrien Brody and Xavier Samuel especially give wonderful performances.

There’s so much filmmaking on offer here. What I mean by that is Dominik throws everything he can into the movie. There’s changes in aspect ratio, blank and white portions, all different sorts of editing, weird framing, montages, Snorricam shots and odd pov shots. This results in some of the most gorgeous cinematography, many scenes are just beautiful to watch but it does beg the question why? It’s maximalist filmmaking but for what reason? It doesn’t really have any meaning or deepen the story on screen, it feels flashy and substance less.

Accompanying the beautiful visuals is a perfect suffocating score that manages to capture Marylin’s emotional journey perfectly. The production design and costumes are also wonderful. So what’s wrong with the film?

Contextually, I think this film is dangerous and offensive. First off, I suppose this is more of critique of the book the film is based off of, but the decision to make a film based on someone’s life that isn’t accurate to their life at all feels violating. The film makes no attempt to display that some of this story is twisted into a fictional retelling, which I thought was going to be the purpose of the change between colour and black and white, but alas that wasn’t what it was used for. Sure, you could argue that any biopic is a fictionalised version of someone’s life but this film goes out of its way to tell false events in Marilyn’s life.

Secondly, it feels odd to have a film that is so demeaning to Marilyn, someone who was already degrading enough during her time. This isn’t the feminist take on her life from her point of view that I expected going in, this is very “male gazey”. There’s an excessive amount of nudity, like De Armas spends 1/3 of the film nude, and is this ever really purposeful? There’s multiple sexual assault and rape scenes, that are trying to highlight the traumatic events Marilyn went through, but the grotesque and explicit ways in which these are filmed feel completely antithetical to what the film is trying to achieve. You have a woman who throughout her career was constantly sexualised and not valued as a person, so what does this film do to shine a light on her perspective? Have scenes where she’s treated as the object the media deemed she was. Numerous scenes where the film follows her panties, instead of her body, all the pointless topless scenes, a blowjob scene that is so perversely shot and lasts a while for no reason and a pov abortion scene.

The film doesn’t cast Marilyn as a person, it doesn’t give us information about how she felt during all this time, it doesn’t really feel interesting in exploring who she really was at all. The one thing we learn about Marilyn throughout the film is that she had daddy issues, and even this gets hammered home too much and takes a perverse turn with Marilyn calling everyone Daddy in the last half of the film. The film feels like a betrayal to who Marilyn was, there was a story there but the film avoiding it and decided to tell a misogynistic and perverse story that is all too family in Hollywood