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.
Mike Tyrkus
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