Based on an untrue story
Biopic features bravura performance, but suffers from some uneven direction
BLONDE
★★½ out of 5
Cast: Ana de Armas, Bobby Cannavale,
Adrien Brody
Director: Andrew Dominik
Duration: 2 h 46 m
Available: Netflix
No “based on a true story” intro for this one. Blonde is an adaptation of a novel by Joyce Carol Oates that was already a heavily fictionalized version of the life and death of Marilyn Monroe. It was previously turned into a TV miniseries not long after its publication in 2000, running two and three quarter hours over two nights on CBS.
That's the same length as writer-director Andrew Dominik's version, which was released last week in select cinemas before coming to Netflix. It's the rare movie that I'd suggest watching at home rather than in a theatre, because it allows you to split the lumbering story into two (or more) parts for easier digestion.
And there's a whole lot going on. Blonde opens with an extended sequence set in 1933 Los Angeles, in which a young Norma Jeane (Monroe's birth name) is almost killed in the bathtub by her mom. This sets up a bunch of issues that will plague the star through her life — absent father, mentally ill mother, desire for a child of her own.
Ana de Armas (Knives Out, No Time to Die) stars as Monroe, and her performance is easily the best part of the film as she captures the star's body language and breathy delivery, and also her shrewdness and intellect. One scene shows her arguing with a studio lackey over being paid far less than Jane Russell in an upcoming movie. “I'm going to get $5,000 and I'm the blond in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?” she shouts into the phone. The next time it rings she announces: “F--- Marilyn, she's not here” and hangs up.
True, her accent wavers a little in a few scenes. But that's nothing compared to Dominik's uneven direction, as he switches from colour to black and white, sometimes within a single scene, frames the action as realistic one moment and dreamlike the next, or lets the score run from silent to period-specific to an ethereal, almost nightmare sound.
Meanwhile, his script truly hammers home the notion that “Marilyn Monroe” was a construct that just happened to share the same body as Norma Jeane. But this is hardly the revelation the film wants it to be, as when we see a crew member asking her: “If you weren't Marilyn, who would you be?”
Ultimately, Blonde tries to do too much with the myth of Monroe, while not trusting its audience to understand the dynamics at play in her life without being spoon-fed. But it's still a bravura performance from de Armas, and a reminder that, whatever else Marilyn was, she'll not be forgotten any time soon. 2026 will mark the centenary of her birth. I wouldn't be surprised if more based-in-truth (or not) films arrive in time for that milestone.