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Blonde Movie Review

Blonde is a 2022 biographical drama film directed by Andrew Dominik and starring Ana de Armas. It’s such a frustratingly exploitative, pointless excursion.

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“But where does dreaming end and madness begin?

Anyway, isn’t all love based on delusion?“

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This movie offers a look at the rise to fame and the epic demise of actress Marilyn Monroe, one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Andrew Dominik is a great director. He did make ‘The Assassination of Jesse James’ after all, which is one of the best westerns out there. And you can find his usual flourishes here, in particular strong cinematography and authentic structure that is different than the standard biopic.

However, for each of his strong choice visually and structurally speaking you can find another terrible one that entirely diminishes the overall product. I am of course talking about the extreme exploitation that is at the heart of this story. The execution was borderline pornographic as the movie most definitely earned its NC-17 rating. I hate this type of movie myself, so watching this one was a torturous experience for me.

Ana de Armas is terrific as Marilyn Monroe. I actually have no qualms about her Oscar nomination as she really went through a lot in order to make this movie. She looks and sounds the part and she sold the more emotional sequences required of her. The problem isn’t with de Armas, but with the characterization as we never really get to know Monroe as a person.

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The movie is heavily concerned with differentiating between Norma Jeane and Marilyn Monroe, but I did not get a sense of getting to know either one of the two. That is because the film is torture porn as it paints Monroe in such a miserable light that she never becomes anything more than just a victim. This is victimhood 101 and I simply did not stand for it.

Other characters are just as atrocious with only Adrien Brody’s Arthur Miller standing out from the rest of the beacon of hope and light. The most pointless part of the story is her ménage a trios in a way, the one that she supposedly had with Edward G. Robinson Jr. and Cass Chaplin. This is an entirely made-up story that was there just to spruce up the juicy sex life of Monroe. It was sexy, but again pointless.

Blonde is gorgeously shot in stark black-and-white. The movie employs different photographic techniques throughout and all worked. The editing, score and directing are also frequently inspired. But the script and dialogue remained a problem throughout, preventing the movie from reaching the cinematic heights that it was supposed to reach. It’s just a nasty experience that I wished I hadn’t gone through.

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