Movie Review: Blonde

Writer/director Andrew Dominik adapts Blonde, the bestselling novel by Joyce Carol Oates, into a colossal beast of a tale that reimagines the life and times of Marilyn Monroe. Unfortunately, apart from a better-than-this film deserves performance from Ana de Armas, there is little to recommend this chaotic behemoth of a story. 

Blonde begins with Monroe’s complicated childhood as Norma Jeane and progresses quickly and nonchalantly through her ascent to becoming one of Hollywood’s most enduring stars to get to the meat of what it is all about – the perils of stardom and the salacious sullying of Monroe’s memory. 

While de Armas fairs better than most in Blonde, everyone involved is awash in the exploitative storytelling at work throughout the film. For a film that is purportedly concerned with addressing the evils of such exploitation and examining how such circumstances contributed to Miss Monroe’s tragic ending, Blonde does very little to distance itself from becoming simply an example of that very problem. 

Although blurring the line between fact and fiction, as Blonde attempts to do, might prove effective in some circumstances, here it is awash in gossip and inuendo that seems better suited to a made-for-television tell-all than a purported theatrical examination of Miss Monroe’s life. Ultimately, Blonde amounts to little more than another example of Marilyn Monroe deserving far better treatment than she receives or was ever afforded.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com

An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

@miketyrkus

Mike Tyrkus

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