Summary
The director frames almost the entire story from the subjectivity of the protagonist, dominated by traumas that she cannot overcome. An ordeal of almost three hours filtered in large part by a dreamlike tone and constant stylizations, formal decisions that perhaps make the character suffer more than the viewer and where, curiously, the main couples of the diva are addressed, but not named. It is clear that this is a fictionalized biography and not a realistic biopic.
Ana de Armas (almost all the time in front of cameras) looks very similar to MM and puts her body to all the harassment and constant suffering of her creature and to the rare truces and moments of happiness, totally dedicated to the marking of the director and screenwriter , for better and for worse.
Review:
The film based on the homonymous biographical novel by Joyce Carol Oates offers a unique journey through the life of Marilyn Monroe, from her childhood to her tragic death.
Undoubtedly, Blonde is not the typical realistic biopic with claims to exhaust the life of a star in its almost three hours, let alone one of the magnitude of MM. It is a fictionalized biography and I don't know how faithful it would be to Oates's novel, in content and tone.
An axis of analysis could be that the film by Andrew Dominik (also a screenwriter) is framed almost exclusively from the point of view of its protagonist, understood as a woman dominated by traumas that she cannot overcome and that are revealed in her bonds and in his career, led by a mother-monster (notably Julianne Nicholson, recently seen in Mare of Easttown), the obsession with the absent father and the ghost of madness. Other elements that appear are motherhood, dissociation and conflicts between the "MM character" (the bombshell and sexual object) and the woman (Norma Jean), the consequent and growing disagreement with the bias of a filmography designed for the "character ", her concerns and efforts to modify her training and profile as an actress, the underestimation of her culture, problematic consumption and the role of actresses as cogs in the gear, as property of an industry that cannot stop and crushes them.
During almost the entire length of the film, all these questions give the protagonist no respite: they are about three hours of an ordeal worthy of a film by Lars Von Trier, a filmmaker characterized by beating his heroines.
But to relate this ordeal, with its variables and determinants, and refer it and submit it to the subjective plane of the protagonist, there is a continuous evasion from realism towards the oneiric and stylization. When I finished Blonde, the comparison with Spencer came to mind, another film about a real character, Lady Diana Spencer, totally subjected to her subjectivity. But while in this case Larraín's film addresses only 3 days of Lady Di's life with her in-laws and is much shorter (and successful), Dominik maintains his focus for almost three hours (and for much of a lifetime) which is excessive for such a long film and leaves out some issues that cannot be addressed in this way (for example, more consistent notes on his films and no development on his relationship with his co-stars).
Dominik does not hesitate to resort to symbolism and images reminiscent of Gaspar Noé, some of which would delight the anti-rights right. Always with an almost square screen format that sometimes narrows and a photograph that oscillates between black and white and color.
With these almost omnipresent formal decisions and the way they are resolved, they end up creating a certain distance where perhaps the result is that in many cases the character suffers more than the viewer...
Except for a curious early link, the story develops her relationship with the athlete, the playwright and the president who were her most famous couples, but without naming them. Perhaps the segment corresponding to this last link is the hardest, most surprising and interesting of the film.
Ana de Armas (almost all the time in front of cameras) looks very similar to MM and puts her body to all the harassment and constant suffering of her creature and to the rare truces and moments of happiness, totally dedicated to the marking of the director and screenwriter , for better and for worse.
The director frames almost the entire story from the subjectivity of the protagonist, dominated by traumas that she cannot overcome. An ordeal of almost three hours filtered in large part by a dreamlike tone and constant stylizations, formal decisions that perhaps make the character suffer more than the viewer and where, curiously, the main couples of the diva are addressed, but not named. It is clear that this is a fictionalized biography and not a realistic biopic.
Ana de Armas (almost all the time in front of cameras) looks very similar to MM and puts her body to all the harassment and constant suffering of her creature and to the rare truces and moments of happiness, totally dedicated to the marking of the director and screenwriter , for better and for worse.
Review:
The film based on the homonymous biographical novel by Joyce Carol Oates offers a unique journey through the life of Marilyn Monroe, from her childhood to her tragic death.
Undoubtedly, Blonde is not the typical realistic biopic with claims to exhaust the life of a star in its almost three hours, let alone one of the magnitude of MM. It is a fictionalized biography and I don't know how faithful it would be to Oates's novel, in content and tone.
An axis of analysis could be that the film by Andrew Dominik (also a screenwriter) is framed almost exclusively from the point of view of its protagonist, understood as a woman dominated by traumas that she cannot overcome and that are revealed in her bonds and in his career, led by a mother-monster (notably Julianne Nicholson, recently seen in Mare of Easttown), the obsession with the absent father and the ghost of madness. Other elements that appear are motherhood, dissociation and conflicts between the "MM character" (the bombshell and sexual object) and the woman (Norma Jean), the consequent and growing disagreement with the bias of a filmography designed for the "character ", her concerns and efforts to modify her training and profile as an actress, the underestimation of her culture, problematic consumption and the role of actresses as cogs in the gear, as property of an industry that cannot stop and crushes them.
During almost the entire length of the film, all these questions give the protagonist no respite: they are about three hours of an ordeal worthy of a film by Lars Von Trier, a filmmaker characterized by beating his heroines.
But to relate this ordeal, with its variables and determinants, and refer it and submit it to the subjective plane of the protagonist, there is a continuous evasion from realism towards the oneiric and stylization. When I finished Blonde, the comparison with Spencer came to mind, another film about a real character, Lady Diana Spencer, totally subjected to her subjectivity. But while in this case Larraín's film addresses only 3 days of Lady Di's life with her in-laws and is much shorter (and successful), Dominik maintains his focus for almost three hours (and for much of a lifetime) which is excessive for such a long film and leaves out some issues that cannot be addressed in this way (for example, more consistent notes on his films and no development on his relationship with his co-stars).
Dominik does not hesitate to resort to symbolism and images reminiscent of Gaspar Noé, some of which would delight the anti-rights right. Always with an almost square screen format that sometimes narrows and a photograph that oscillates between black and white and color.
With these almost omnipresent formal decisions and the way they are resolved, they end up creating a certain distance where perhaps the result is that in many cases the character suffers more than the viewer...
Except for a curious early link, the story develops her relationship with the athlete, the playwright and the president who were her most famous couples, but without naming them. Perhaps the segment corresponding to this last link is the hardest, most surprising and interesting of the film.
Ana de Armas (almost all the time in front of cameras) looks very similar to MM and puts her body to all the harassment and constant suffering of her creature and to the rare truces and moments of happiness, totally dedicated to the marking of the director and screenwriter , for better and for worse.