It’s hard to be oblivious to or ignorant of Marilyn Monroe. She was a sex symbol, a glamorous movie star, and today, a cultural icon. So much has been written about her. She was constantly photographed, adored, and lusted after. She was the definitive Hollywood screen legend, and the definitive Hollywood victim.
Her career in Hollywood, which spanned a mere dozen years, was spiced with so much off-screen drama. Even her demise, from an overdose of barbiturates in 1962 at age 36, was dramatic. Today, 60 years after her death, conspiracy theories over its cause remain aplenty. People are still profiting from her name. Even in death, she’s still being exploited.
Young people, here and abroad, may not be familiar with her career, even if at one time or another they may have encountered her image. One of Madonna’s more popular music videos, Material Girl, was inspired by Monroe’s famous musical number, Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend, from the 1953 musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Even the habitués of the less-than reputable girly bars along P. Burgos in Makati may have encountered a poorly painted life-size copy of her image adorning the entrance of one of those watering holes.
The latest high-profile venture to profit from Marilyn Monroe’s life is the film Blonde, now streaming on Netflix. Written and directed by Andrew Dominik, Blonde is based on the fictional novel of the same title by Joyce Carol Oates. I must again emphasize that the novel is fictional. Thus, what happens in Blonde isn’t true-to-life. As the director said himself, his film is a reimagining of the life of Marilyn Monroe.
Frankly, the life of Monroe doesn’t need to be reimagined. She led an exciting if tumultuous life. The world was at her feet. She met with queens and titans, and was on the cover of every magazine. Or as that campy song from the 1980s goes, she “sipped champagne on a yacht, and moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed ‘em what she’s got.”
At that time, not many women had what she had. Other buxom blonde bombshells were groomed to compete with her, but none of them achieved the level of fame Monroe enjoyed. She worked with the best directors, from John Huston to Billy Wilder. She acted with legends like Laurence Olivier, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, and Clark Gable.
Frankly, the life of Monroe doesn’t need to be reimagined
Viewers won’t see that glittering chapter in Blonde. If ever, we just see a tiny bit of it. The movie does follow the blueprints of Monroe’s life. It starts from her tragic childhood, and skims through the movie career and two failed high-profile marriages, and onto her death. Dominik’s take on Monroe is bleak, tragic, and exploitative. It’s a stylish version of the true-to-life homegrown massacre movies that were prevalent in the early 2000s. It’s no less exploitative than movies like The Claudia Zobel Story.
The difference is Dominik does this with arty cinematography and virtuoso camera work. The film is shot mostly in black and white, with a few a scenes done in pale colors. (I’m still trying to figure out the significance of the scenes in color.) But it does effectively create an atmosphere that captures the look and flavor of Monroe’s world in the 1950s and early 1960s. It plays like an old Life magazine photo essay of her life using moving pictures. It also helps establish the paranoia the subject feels in almost every moment of her life.
The turmoil that Dominik’s Monroe encounters is constant. It’s less a biography and more of psychological horror in the tradition of Darren Oronofsky’s Black Swan or Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Her mentally unbalanced mother nearly drowns her. She is sexually abused by studio heads, fellow actors, and the US President. Her spouses abused her either physically or mentally.
There is no moment of joy for Monroe in Blonde. Even when she was dating, she’d talk as if she was exposing her inner thoughts to her therapist. In the glittering Hollywood soirées, she complains about fame and thinks only of the father who abandoned her and her mother. She is unhappy with her career even if it had brought her so much fame and wealth.
This may have been true, but viewers won’t learn much more about the star. The movie ignores the other aspects of her life. What prompted her to get into acting in the movies isn’t delved on. From a shy brunette, she just transformed into the blonde starlet Marilyn Monroe.
The timelines are also confusing. You see her get into a big Lincoln limousine that was manufactured in 1958, yet it’s indicated that the event transpired in 1953. Blame it on lazy writing and a lack of focus on details. It seems that the director assumes his audience already knows everything about Marilyn Monroe, so he just jumps from one crisis to another and makes little effort to establish his subject’s situation at that moment.
‘Blonde’ fails as film biography, saved by its Hollywood A-list veneer
Consequently, Blonde fails as film biography. It’s no Black Swan, either. It’s just an exploitative (that word again) movie that borders on soft porn. What puts it way above that genre is its Hollywood A-list veneer. The production budget is huge, and it shows on the screen. Adding to its cachet is the producer, Brad Pitt. And of course, the name of Marilyn Monroe makes a huge impact. I’m not sure if Brad Pitt would get involved had Dominik written a movie about a fictional star.
It also has a cast of distinguished actors led by Ana de Armas. Admittedly, I was skeptical when it was announced that the Cuban-born star had been signed to play the all-American Marilyn Monroe, who still is the epitome of the Hollywood sex symbol. (What!? No accusations of cultural appropriation!?)
But De Armas plays the role brilliantly. Watching Blonde is watching Marilyn Monroe play herself in a horror movie. The fiery Latina presence of De Armas reveals itself only once, and that’s when Monroe is seen in a rage. Otherwise, you’re watching Monroe and not an actress playing Monroe, and not a CGI version of Monroe.
Occasionally, De Armas has to veer away from Monroe’s likeness when she has to express certain emotions that leave her bug-eyed. In those scenes, she resembles the1930s platinum bombshell Jean Harlow. There’s a bit of Charlize Theron and Lady Gaga in there, too. Still, we expect the name of Ana de Armas on the list of nominees of every acting award to be given out next year.
Now if Blonde is too much of a downer for you, then check out My Week with Marilyn. Most of what happens in this movie is true and seen from the eyes of a production assistant (played by Eddie Redmayne) of her film The Prince and the Showgirl.
My Week with Marilyn is based on the diaries of the assistant who was tasked to make sure Monroe arrived in the studio on time. The cast is excellent, especially Michelle Williams (as Monroe) and Kenneth Brannagh (as Laurence Olivier). Blonde is cheerless and charmless, as My Week with Marilyn is sunnier and more poignant.
Credit: Netflix/YouTube
