Blonde – first-look review

When Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe died on 4 August, 1962, her lega­cy was writ in water. The bulk of her estate passed to her beloved act­ing coach Lee Stras­berg who passed soon after, leav­ing her for­tune and the rights to her life and image in the hands of his new wife, Anna Mizrahi who Mon­roe had nev­er met.

From that moment on Mon­roe was up for sale, with her image and sto­ry avail­able to the high­est bid­der that fuelled an endur­ing obses­sion with the trag­ic star. Inane quotes are con­tin­u­al­ly false­ly attrib­uted to her; bur­ial spot next to her went to Hugh Hefn­er, who pub­lished naked pic­tures of her with­out her con­sent; and this year Kim Kar­dashi­an walked the Met Gala red car­pet in one of her beloved gowns before being grotesque­ly gift­ed a tuft of her blonde hair. The actress who radi­at­ed an almost divine screen pres­ence across her short career, devot­ed her­self to her craft, and suc­ceed­ed under insur­mount­able odds, has at no point been allowed to rest in peace.

There have been myr­i­ad books, films and doc­u­men­taries on the late star but per­haps none so high­ly acclaimed as Joyce Car­ol Oates’ 2000 nov­el ​‘Blonde’. The book starts with a fore-warn­ing, this is a ​“dis­tilled ​‘life’ in the form of fic­tion explor­ing a small selec­tion of Mon­roes life sym­bol­i­cal­ly”, for those in search of the cold hard facts Oates even goes on to rec­om­mend a series of biogra­phies that she con­sult­ed. Andrew Dominik’s long delayed and high­ly antic­i­pat­ed film adap­ta­tion takes the nov­el and mas­sages it fur­ther into the realm of unadul­ter­at­ed fan­ta­sy. This is not so much a biopic as it is a sur­re­al tragedy about the impos­si­bil­i­ty of being Mar­i­lyn Monroe.

Start­ing with her abu­sive child­hood the film skips for­ward to Mar­i­lyn as an up-an-com­ing star­let, mak­ing a decent liv­ing as a mod­el but dream­ing of mak­ing it as a legit­i­mate actor. The film is self-con­scious­ly strange from its first moment, with a bliz­zard of tones, aspect ratios and switch­es from colour to black-and-white. The so-called male gaze flick­ers on and off but leans into spec­tac­u­lar­ly leer­ing ter­ri­to­ry when our pro­tag­o­nist is being objec­ti­fied by the peo­ple around her.

This results in a film so loaded with film­mak­ing flour­ish and so com­mit­ted to sub­jec­tiv­i­ty it is daz­zling to behold. Ana de Armas is bewitch­ing in the role, with her faint accent only enhanc­ing the arti­fice of Mon­roe, but at times holds such a close resem­blance to the star it feels like an AI gen­er­at­ed deep-fake might be being used. Her Mar­i­lyn falls square­ly in the ​“uncan­ny val­ley” where the resem­blance is unset­tling, even sin­is­ter, which builds upon the film’s fas­ci­nat­ing cen­tral con­ceit, that this isn’t Mar­i­lyn this is an ungod­ly approx­i­ma­tion, poured through 60 years of her sto­ry being bastardised.

Dominik has Mon­roe run­ning through a series of fun-house mir­rors, be it in sex­u­al ecsta­sy with a tem­porar­i­ly sat­is­fy­ing polyamory; the famous The Sev­en Year Itch where her skirt ris­es again and again in front of a bay­ing mob of per­verts; or the sun dap­pled romance of her hon­ey­moon with Arthur Miller. What’s most excit­ing about Dominik’s vision is that it pieces togeth­er the most famous images of Mon­roe to cre­ate a col­lage that pays homage to her ulti­mate unknowability.

This is not a film that many will feel neu­tral about. For all that it is an exhil­a­rat­ing and high­ly accom­plished opus for Dominik the explic­it nature of it will alien­ate many, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to an ear­ly rape scene and a bone-chill­ing­ly bleak blow-job per­formed on JFK. What is unde­ni­ably egre­gious is his choice to reg­u­lar­ly insert the cam­era into Monroe’s womb, show­ing unborn foe­tus­es and abor­tions from the cervix’s perspective.

While it’s near impos­si­ble to coher­ent­ly defend that choice, the anar­chy of Blonde is ulti­mate­ly its great­est strength. And while many detrac­tors may feel that this descent into dark erot­ic chaos is a betray­al of Monroe’s lega­cy, per­haps it most apt that Blonde reminds us that we had no own­er­ship over Mon­roe, or her sto­ry, from the start.