Review of Blonde, directed by Andrew Dominik

I remember there was a hot minute when this movie first came out that everyone was talking about the film. There were such mixed reactions when this came out because Marilyn Monroe is a complicated figure, and anything that isn’t done properly can potentially run into exploitative territory.

Throughout the years I’ve read so much about Monroe and Golden Age Hollywood. Although it’s not my focus in graduate school, as a budding historian of sorts, I spend a lot of time dwelling on Hollywood and its history. My room has quite a few books on the subject, and I’ve checked out more over the years.

Although it’s been a while since this movie came out, I was scrolling through Netflix on one boring Tuesday lunch when this movie appeared right at the front of my home page. I didn’t really want to watch it throughout all these years, but I kind of just shrugged and decided to press play anyways.

And boy, do I have some thoughts about this movie. My first inkling and rumination, before we get too deep into it, is that maybe this would have turned out differently if a woman directed it.

Let’s get into the review!

A fictionalized tale on the life of celebrated actress Marilyn Monroe.

I’d buckle up for this movie, as instead of focusing on a single pivotal moment in Monroe’s life, the filmmaker instead decides to sit down and go through all of the major events. It’s basically a biography in movie form, or a biopic stretched to its furthest form. My hot take is that this might’ve been a better movie if it were more focused, but that might be my taste talking.

We begin in her childhood, when Marilyn is just Norma Jeane. She’s raised by a mother who isn’t mentally stable, and, when she turns seven, her mother gives her a picture that she claims is her father. Norma Jeane is woken up in the middle of the night by a rampaging fire in the neighborhood, and her mother takes her, puts her in the car, and drives straight to the source of the fire.

She claims her father lives where the fire started, but the cops force her mother and Norma Jeane to go back home before they end up getting themselves killed. Norma Jeane is almost drowned by her mother, she runs away to their neighbor’s home, and her mother is put in a mental hospital after the event.

Norma Jeane no longer lives with her mother, but her first endeavor in entertainment is becoming a pin-up model. It’s here she ends up adorning the name Marilyn Monroe, and she’s hired to do pictures for magazines, calendars, and other various goodies you can get in the world.

She decides to take on acting, and, after being raped by a film studio president, she continues to audition in the industry. Her first break comes when she gets an audition for a movie coming out, and, despite not doing well in the audition, she gets the part. Her career begins to become bigger and bigger, and she finds lovers in Charles Chaplin and Eddy Robinson Jr.

In 1953, she gets her big break with Niagara, but is the source of scandal when she’s seen with both men. Norma Jeane begins to struggle with who she is as a person versus Marilyn, as she sees Marilyn as another character. She then realizes she’s pregnant with Chaplin’s baby, but gets an abortion with his support. She then decides to break up with the men, as she’s haunted with her decision to get an abortion.

She then meets and falls in love with former baseball player Joe DiMaggio, who she feels takes her seriously. While filming Gentlemen Prefer Blondes she gets a letter supposedly from her father, and she excitedly goes to her hotel room thinking he’s there. Instead, it’s Joe ready to propose. She agrees, despite being upset about it.

However, her former lovers leak her nudes, which makes Joe hit her and he attempts to make er back out of the movie she’s currently in: The Seven Year Itch. After he loses it when she appears in the film, she decides to leave her. After that, she meets playwright Arthur Miller while auditioning for a Broadway play by him.

They have good conversations, so they fall in love and marry. She even becomes pregnant again, but has a miscarriage after falling on the beach. She had quit acting until that point, but this is the stage where she returns back into the game. During Some Like It Hot, though, her mental state declines as she struggles to adjust back to fame.

This leads her to take pills, and she becomes addicted. She then also has a terrible encounter with JFK, who rapes her, nd she begins to hallucinate. Her former lover calls her, and reveals Chaplin was the writer of the letters from her father. Norma Jeane is gutted by this, and then overdoses. The final scene is her dying, imagining her father is greeting her in heaven.

Overall Thoughts

I’ll start with one of the pros about this movie: the black and white is honestly really gorgeous. I have such an appreciation for movies that are shot well in black and white, and this is one of those that just works really well. It’s extremely difficult to pull this off if you don’t know what you’re doing.

But, overall, I would agree that the movie felt exploitative of Monroe’s background. As I mentioned before, if the filmmaker had decided to focus on a certain moment of her life, it might’ve have been executed better. Instead, it now feels like a highlight reel of all of Monroe’s personal tragedies and mental health issues.

That said, more care could have been put into this. It’s a visually gorgeous movie, but it’s kind of difficult to watch because of how it frames Monroe’s life. It also infantilizes her in a way that I thought to be very male gaze-y.

Yes, Monroe did struggle with the lack of father in her life, but some of the decisions made in the movie I found to be kind of questionable. All in all, it could have been done better.

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