blonde movie review the guardian

Blonde review – a hellish vision of Marilyn and her monsters

Andrew Dominik’s gothic portrait of the inner life of Marilyn Monroe – an extraordinary Ana de Armas – is a fever dream of childhood trauma haunting adult life

H ow should we assess writer-director Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s historical fiction novel about the inner life of Marilyn Monroe? Some have viewed it as a biopic and judged it accordingly, worrying about its (lack of) fidelity to the known details of Monroe’s life, and attempting to evaluate how accurately or (un)fairly it presents her strengths and weaknesses, on and off screen. Others have interpreted it as a more expressionist portrayal of the gap between private and public personae – a generic peep at the tears behind the smiling mask of celebrity. Yet at its heart this is a gothic melodrama, a fever dream of childhood trauma haunting adult life, replete with skin-crawlingly cruel visions of inquisitorial torture, brutal ordeals and hellish infernos – more Nightmare on Elm Street than My Week With Marilyn .

Cuban actor Ana de Armas, who proved a scene-stealing presence in films such as Knives Out and No Time to Die , is simply extraordinary as Norma Jeane Baker, an aspiring performer for whom the spectre of Marilyn Monroe is an assumed identity – a portal to stardom. Her past is full of monsters: a mother (a mesmerising Julianne Nicholson) who drives her into raging fires and attempts to drown her in a scalding bath; and an unknown father from whom she receives creepily controlling ghostly missives. Juggling past and present, Dominik intercuts childhood fears with grownup tears as she encounters monstrous studio heads (an early “audition” leads to rape), violent husbands (Bobby Cannavale’s Joe DiMaggio beats her when pin-up photos fire his jealousy) and loveless lovers (an assignation with JFK will make you gag). Worse still are the grotesque intra-uterine visions of doctors that owe a debt to the demonic delirium of Rosemary’s Baby ( Roman Polanski’s Repulsion also casts a long shadow) or to the abortive abortion scene from David Cronenberg’s The Fly crossed with the imagined unborn-baby-talk of Alice Lowe’s antenatal slasher Prevenge .

In many ways, Blonde is a shrieking sister picture to the altogether gentler The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford . In that masterful 2007 study of stardom, Brad Pitt’s antihero is killed by a creep who has idolised him since childhood. In Blonde , we find that near-mythological celebrity not only masks personal loss, but also draws destruction upon itself. It’s a deal made with the devil, encapsulated most acutely in a scene in which a distraught Norma Jeane waits desperately for the spirit of Marilyn to possess her, a transformation chillingly played out in her dressing-table mirror as her tears turn to a familiar megawatt smile. It’s a smile that reminded me of Sheryl Lee in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me , where Laura Palmer’s homecoming queen visage is fleetingly replaced with that of a screaming demon. If The Assassination of Jesse James was a film about fame dressed as a western, then Blonde is a horror movie masquerading as a film about fame.

Shifting back and forth from monochrome to colour in ever-changing screen sizes, Blonde draws heavily on iconic images of its subject in the same way that Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis seemed to breathe life into familiar still pictures. There’s something genuinely uncanny about the way Dominik places De Armas in Monroe’s shoes, reproducing well-rehearsed movie scenes in a manner that sometimes left me wondering whether this was archive or invention, memory or make-believe.

Critics will claim (justifiably) that Blonde portrays Monroe as having no agency in this victimised life story, or that the movie fails to give her credit for the comedic panache she demonstrated in hits such as Some Like It Hot (tonally, Blonde is closer to the overheated psychosis of 1952’s Don’t Bother to Knock ). It’s true that humour is in short supply, reduced to blackly comic gags about Kennedy watching rockets blast off while being dutifully fellated. Yet despite its note-perfect evocation of moments from Monroe’s life, I would argue that in the end Blonde isn’t really about Marilyn at all. It just happens to be wearing her wardrobe.

Underpinning it all is another gloriously evocative score from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, a melancholy symphony of ambient electronica and eerie voices, interspersed with tinkling acoustic themes that sprinkle a hint of tearful stardust glitter upon a sea of mournful tragedy and despair.

In cinemas now and on Netflix from Wednesday

• Mark Kermode's film of the week
• Drama films
• Marilyn Monroe
• Joyce Carol Oates

Most viewed

“Blonde” abuses and exploits Marilyn Monroe all over again, the way so many men did over the cultural icon’s tragic, too-short life. Maybe that’s the point, but it creates a maddening paradox: condemning the cruelty the superstar endured until her death at 36 while also reveling in it.

And yet writer/director Andrew Dominik ’s film, based on the fictional novel by Joyce Carol Oates , remains technically impeccable throughout, even though it feels like an overlong odyssey at nearly three hours. The craftsmanship on display presents another conundrum: “Blonde” is riveting, even mesmerizing, but eventually you’ll want to turn your eyes away as this lurid display becomes just too much. My personal breaking point was a POV shot from inside Marilyn’s vagina as she was having a forced abortion performed on her. A lengthy, extreme close-up of a drugged-up Monroe fellating President Kennedy while he’s on the phone in a hotel room also feels gratuitous and is probably why the film has earned a rare NC-17 rating.

Did any of this really happen? Maybe. Maybe not. What you have to understand from the start is that “Blonde” is an exploration of the idea of Marilyn Monroe. It’s as much a biopic of the film star as “ Elvis ” is a biopic of Elvis Presley . It touches on a series of actual, factual events as a road map, from her movies to her marriages. But ultimately, it’s a fantasia of fame, which increasingly becomes a hellscape. That’s more exciting than the typical biography that plays the greatest hits of a celebrity’s life in formulaic fashion, and “Blonde” is consistently inventive as it toys with both tone and form. By the end, though, this approach feels overwhelming and even a little dreary.  

As Marilyn Monroe—or her real name of Norma Jeane, as she’s mostly called in the film— Ana de Armas is asked to cry. A lot. Sometimes it’s a light tear or two as she draws from her traumatic childhood for an acting class exercise. Usually, it’s heaving sobs as the cumulative weight of mental illness and addiction takes its toll. When she’s not crying, she’s naked. Frequently, she’s both, as well as bloody. And in nearly every situation, she’s either a pawn or a victim, a fragile angel searching for a father figure to love and protect her.

Certainly, some of this is accurate—the way Hollywood power brokers regarded her as a pretty face and a great ass when she wanted them to consider her a serious actress and love her for her soul. De Armas gives it her all in every moment; she’s so captivating, so startling, that you long for the part to provide her the opportunity to show more of Marilyn’s depth, to dig deeper than the familiar cliches. She’s doing the breathy, girlish voice, but not perfectly—traces of her Cuban accent are unmistakable—and that’s OK given the film’s unorthodox approach. More importantly, she captures Monroe’s spirit, and often looks uncannily like her. Following standout supporting turns in movies like “ Knives Out ” and “ No Time to Die ,” as well as the delicious trash that was “ Deep Water ,” here is finally the meaty, leading role that showcases all she can do. She’s so good that she makes you wish the role rose to her level.

“Blonde” is a fever dream from the very start. Working with cinematographer Chayse Irivn (“ BlacKkKlansman ,” Beyonce’s “Lemonade”) and frequent musical collaborators Nick Cave and Warren Ellis , Dominik sets the scene with impressionistic wisps of sight and sound. Shadows and ethereal snippets of score mix with ash from a fire in the Hollywood hills blowing through the night sky. The phone rings loudly. The camera swish pans to the left. We’re immediately on edge. It’s Los Angeles 1933, and young Norma Jeane (a poised and heartbreaking Lily Fisher ) is enduring horrific physical and emotional abuse from her volatile and hyperverbal mother (a haunting Julianne Nicholson , always great).

Dominik (“ The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ”) proclaims his restless style from the beginning—jumping around not just in time, but from high-contrast black and white to rich Technicolor and in between various aspect ratios. Sometimes, the color palette is faded, as if we’re looking at Marilyn in a long-ago photograph. Sometimes, the sound design is muted—as in her classic performance of “I Wanna Be Loved by You” from “ Some Like It Hot ”—to indicate the confusion of her inner state. It’s all thrilling for a while, and de Armas strikes a magnetic figure as the young Marilyn in both her vulnerability and her ambition.

An imagined three-way romance with Charlie Chaplin Jr. ( Xavier Samuel ) and Edward G. Robinson Jr. ( Evan Williams ) brings a welcome vibe of fun and frolic; they’re both beautiful and flirtatious, smoldering and seductive. And it becomes clear as the movie progresses that they’re the only men who loved her for her true self as Norma Jeane while also appreciating the beguiling artifice of Marilyn. This relationship also teaches Norma Jeane to lose herself in the mirror in order to find the famous persona she’ll present to the outside world: “There she is, your magic friend,” “Cass” Chaplin purrs as he caresses her from behind. And Dominik will return to that image of Norma Jeane beseeching her own reflection as a means of conjuring strength. The character’s stark duality gives de Armas plenty of room to show off her impressive range and precise technique.

But too much of “Blonde” is about men chewing Marilyn up and spitting her back out. A studio executive known only as “Mr. Z”—presumably as in Zanuck—rapes her when she visits his office about a part. New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio ( Bobby Cannavale ) seems like a decent and tender husband until he turns controlling and violent. Her next husband, playwright Arthur Miller (an understated Adrien Brody ), is patient and kind yet emotionally detached—but by the time Marilyn is married to him, anxiety, booze and pills have wrecked her so significantly that no one could have helped.

She calls these men “Daddy” in the hope that they’ll function in place of the father she never knew but desperately craved, but in the end, everyone lets her down. And “Blonde” does, too, as it strands de Armas in a third-act sea of hysteria. As for the film’s many graphic moments—including one from the perspective of an airplane toilet, as if Marilyn is puking up pills and champagne directly on us—one wonders what the point is. Merely to shock? To show the extent to which the Hollywood machinery commodified her? That’s nothing new.

“Blonde” is actually more powerful in its gentler interludes—when Marilyn and Arthur Miller are teasingly chasing each other on the beach, for example, hugging and kissing in the golden, shimmering sunlight. “Am I your good girl, Daddy?” she asks him sweetly, seeking his approval. But of course, she can’t be happy here, either. All her joyous times are tinged with sadness because we know how this story ends.

More often, Dominik seems interested in scenes like the garish slow-motion of the “Some Like It Hot” premiere, where hordes of ravenous men line the sidewalks for Marilyn’s arrival, frantically chanting her name, their eyes and mouths distorted to giant, frightening effect as if they wish to devour her whole. He similarly lingers in his depiction of the famous subway grate moment from “The Seven Year Itch,” with Marilyn’s ivory halter dress billowing up around her as she giggles and smiles for the crowds and cameras. (The costume design from Jennifer Johnson is spectacularly on-point throughout, from her famous gowns to simple sweaters and capri pants.) We see it in black-and-white and color, in slow-motion and regular speed, from every imaginable angle, over and over again.

After a while, it becomes so repetitive that this iconic, pop culture moment grows numbing, and we grow weary of the spectacle. Maybe that’s Dominik’s point after all. But we shouldn’t be.

In limited theatrical release tomorrow. On Netflix on September 23rd.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Adrien Brody as The Playwright
• Ana de Armas as Norma Jeane
• Bobby Cannavale as The Ex-Athlete
• Garret Dillahunt as
• Sara Paxton as Miss Flynn
• Lucy DeVito as
• Julianne Nicholson as Gladys
• Scoot McNairy as
• Xavier Samuel as Cass Chaplin
• Caspar Phillipson as The President
• Evan Williams as Eddy G. Robinson Jr.
• Rebecca Wisocky as Yvet
• Toby Huss as Whitey
• Catherine Dent as Jean
• Haley Webb as Brooke
• Eden Riegel as Esther
• Spencer Garrett as President's Pimp
• Dan Butler as
• Tygh Runyan as Father
• David Warshofsky as Mr. Z
• Lily Fisher as Young Norma Jeane
• Michael Masini as Tony Curtis
• Chris Lemmon as
• Ned Bellamy as Doc Fell
• Sonny Valicenti as Casting Director
• Colleen Foy as Pat
• Brian Konowal as
• Tatum Shank as Dick Tracy
• Andrew Thacher as Jiggs
• Dominic Leeder as Bugs Bunny
• Lidia Sabljic as Sweet Sue
• Isabel Dresden as Doc Fell's Nurse
• Skip Pipo as Dr. Bender
• Tyler Bruhn as NYC Acting Student
• Ravil Isyanov as Billy Wilder
• Tim Ransom as Rudy
• Judy Kain as Severe Woman
• Time Winters as George Sanders
• Rob Brownstein as The Acting Coach
• Danielle Jane Darling as L.a. Actor #3
• Mia McGovern Zaini as Young Norma Jeane
• Rob Nagle as Radio Announcer
• Emil Beheshti as Brentwood Doctor
• Jeremy Shouldis as Tuxedo #2
• Ethan Cohn as Assistant to the Director
• Steve Bannos as Brentwood Doctor
• Mike Ostroski as The Writer
• Danielle Lima as Swimsuit Model
• Christopher Kriesa as Joe E. Brown
• Eric Matheny as Joseph Cotten
• Jerry Hauck as Tuxedo #1
• Scott Hislop as Marilyn Dancer
• Dieterich Gray as Photographer's Assistant
• Kiva Jump as Ward Nurse at Norwalk
• Patrick Brennan as Joe
• Chris Moss as Dancer
• Ryan Vincent as Uncle Clive
• Brian Konowal as Pissing Man
• Adam Robinson
• Andrew Dominik

Cinematographer

• Chayse Irvin

Writer (novel)

• Joyce Carol Oates
• Warren Ellis

Leave a comment

Now playing.

The Room Next Door

The Brutalist

Mufasa: The Lion King

September 5

The Last Showgirl

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

Dirty Angels

Theatre of Thought

Nickel Boys

Latest articles.

The Great Performances of 2024, Part One

Peacock Turns the Rom-Com Into a Game of Death in the Charming “Laid”

No Box He Won’t Escape From: James Mangold on “A Complete Unknown”

Chaz Ebert on the Slate Podcast “Death, Sex & Money”

The best movie reviews, in your inbox.

• Entertainment
• Celebrities
• Ticket Sales

trending now

Chargers convert rare kick that hasn't been made in NFL in nearly...

Wendy Williams cries at son's college graduation, rides scooter...

Elon Musk rages, blames Jefferies as Dem and GOP hardliners tank...

Boomers ruin their spaghetti with these common cooking errors,...

White House aides hid Biden's apparent mental decline from Day 1...

Stephen A. Smith warns Aaron Rodgers as feud with ESPN analyst...

100 North Korean soldiers killed in Ukraine as video shows...

King Charles, Queen Camilla arrive at pre-Christmas lunch after...

‘blonde’ reviews: critics drool over ana de armas, ‘uncanny’ as marilyn monroe.

Some critics prefer “Blonde.”

The reimagined Marilyn Monroe biopic “Blonde” starring Ana de Armas premiered at the Venice Film Festival Thursday , earning praise from several critics for its portrayal of the 1950s blonde bombshell.

Adapted from the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name, the film runs nearly three hours and received a 14-minute standing ovation from the crowd, which caused de Armas to break down into tears, according to Variety .

“Andrew Dominik’s Venice Film Festival competition entry ‘Blonde’ takes a blowtorch to the entire concept of the Hollywood biopic and arrives at something almost without precedent,” Deadline’s critic said .

“[‘Blonde’] is simply inventing fresh indignities for the most positively, permanently persecuted heroine outside of a John Waters movie ever to have to suffer.”

As Netflix’s first film with an NC-17 rating, “Blonde” sparked backlash almost instantly when it debuted its first trailer in July over the casting of de Armas due to the fact that she is Cuban and her accent was not “authentic.”

Variety’s critic Owen Gleiberman disagreed in his review , saying the film is “built around a performance, by Ana de Armas, of breathtaking shimmer and imagination and candor and heartbreak. It’s a luscious piece of acting with a raw scream tucked inside.”

“No actress alive is going to look just like Monroe (de Armas’ eyes are a dead ringer; her smile is a tad less ripe and more knowing), but with Marilyn the voice is everything — that’s where her personality lives — and de Armas nails it to an uncanny degree,” he added.

“In ‘Blonde,’ she gives us nothing less than what we came for. She becomes Marilyn Monroe.”

Despite the high praise, some reviewers found that “Blonde” deprives Monroe of her own urgency.

“This is a portrait of Monroe that accentuates her suffering and anguish, canonizing her into a feminist saint who died for our scopophilic sins,” wrote the Guardian .

“The psychological framework is very old-school Hollywood Freudian, which doesn’t give Monroe herself much agency in her story.”

Other critics were just bored of the topic.

“This is a work of such wild excesses and questionable cruelty that it leaves you wondering how many more times and in how many more creative ways are we going to keep torturing, degrading and killing this abused woman,” slammed the Hollywood Reporter.

Social media users, however, are divided on how to feel about the upcoming film.

“Seeing ‘Blonde’ reviews about that movie being total dogs–t i am grinning from ear to ear,” tweeted one user .

“If ‘Blonde’ truly is a nearly 3-hour showcase for sexual assault (as many early reviews are suggesting) then I don’t think I’m going to be able to watch it,” another said .

“Count me as pro-BLONDE! Any movie taking big swings is going to stumble a bit over 166 minutes, but the underlying project of exploring how Hollywood destroys actresses hits hard. Ana de Armas is terrific,” exclaimed a user.

“BLONDE. Ana de Armas shines in Dominik’s heartbreaking fictional biopic,” tweeted another.

“I did this movie to push myself… to make other people change their opinion about me,” de Armas told the AP. “This movie changed my life.”

“I wasn’t in character all the time. But I felt that. I was living that. I felt that heaviness and that weight in my shoulders. And I felt that sadness,” she added. “She was all I thought about. She was all I dreamed about. She was all I talked about… It was beautiful.”

“Blonde” is currently set to debut on the silver screen on September 18, 2022, before making its way to Netflix on September 28.

Advertisement

Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Fitness & Wellbeing
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Car Insurance Deals
• Lifestyle Videos
• Home & Garden
• Broadband deals
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Climate 100
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Solar Panels
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Wine Offers
• Betting Sites
• Casino Sites

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

Blonde review: Dull trauma porn with no idea what it’s trying to say

Andrew dominik’s biopic is degrading, exploitative and misogynist, yet mercilessly boring.

Independent Premium

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews

Sign up to our free indyarts newsletter.

Dir: Andrew Dominik. Starring: Ana de Armas, Julianne Nicholson, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale. Cert 18, 165 minutes

Never mind the diamonds. I’ll tell you who isn’t a girl’s best friend: Andrew Dominik, the writer-director of Blonde , a merciless, dull, over-long riff on Marilyn Monroe . Across its lengthy running time, the Hollywood star has a time of it. She is nearly drowned by her mother. Raped at an audition. Forced into an abortion. Harangued by the unborn foetus she’s about to abort. Attacked by a husband she calls “daddy”. It’s no exaggeration to say that she cries in almost every scene. To borrow a phrase, if you can’t handle Marilyn Monroe as an adult woman in possession of agency, you sure as hell don’t deserve to make an almost-three-hour film about her.

But Blonde is not a bad film because it is degrading, exploitative and misogynist, even though it is all of those things. It’s bad because it’s boring, pleased with itself and doesn’t have a clue what it’s trying to say. Based on Joyce Carol Oates’s sprawling 700-page novel, which offers a fictionalised version of Monroe’s life, the script consists of the star saying things like, “she’s pretty, I guess, but she isn’t me” or, “I guess there isn’t any Norma Jeane, is there”. At one point, she declares “f*** Marilyn, she’s not here!” and slams down a phone. Insightful. All I could think was, “the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now”. This surface-level observation, that her constructed persona might have induced a sense of depersonalisation, does not feel revelatory or new. You’d expect to watch Blonde for what it might tell us about Monroe’s life, her legacy, or the culture that remains infatuated with her. You’ll find none of these things.

The film flits between scenes in colour and black and white, inserting real events like her marriages and film roles, with invented ones, such as a threesome with Charlie Chaplin’s son and Edward G Robinson Jr. As Monroe, Ana de Armas has an edgy, nervous energy. It’s a deceptively sophisticated portrayal, playing a person who is always playing a role. But she is kept in a place of perpetual skittishness that is exhausting to watch, in a performance so demanding that in one scene – a bedroom encounter with a president who is obviously JFK – she almost has to deep throat the camera. Julianne Nicholson is eerily disturbing as Monroe’s mentally unwell mother, but as her husbands Joe Di Maggio and Arthur Miller (here “The Ex-Athlete” and “The Playwright”), Bobby Cannavale and Adrien Brody have little to do but be in Monroe’s orbit, nastily or blankly inflicting more misery.

Films about the lives of the famous don’t, of course, have to cleave to the conventional biopic narrative. Some of the best don’t: Pablo Larraín’s Spencer , through hallucinatory imagined scenes, gave us an intense, artful psychological portrait of Princess Diana. It made things up to search for a deeper truth, which was how it might have felt to be her. Its star, Kristen Stewart, described it as “a tone poem”. But, unfortunately, Blonde is just trauma porn.

If I could grasp at one thing I thought the film was exploring, it was the idea of Monroe as a psychic space, a creation that haunted the real person trying to occupy her. We see her in an acting class, losing control, overcome by the feelings she’s trying to summon for her character. After she’s read for an audition, one of the men watching declares her to be “like watching a mental patient – no technique”. His colleague agrees: “People like that, you can see why they’re drawn to acting. Because the actor in her role always knows who she is”. Unable to grasp her public or private self and failing to forge a solid identity, she is lost and vulnerable.

But the psychological pressure of being the most photographed woman in the world is never really summoned. Aside from some meticulously choreographed recreations of film scenes, some unimaginative looming paparazzi shots and some billboards, Monroe’s world feels hermetically sealed. She is so isolated a figure here that we don’t get a sense of her dizzying celebrity, her impact on the public, or vice versa. Part of the problem is that the film skips forward from her difficult childhood straight into Monroe as a fully formed star. We don’t observe her trajectory or even the introduction of a characteristic so iconic the film itself is named for it – the moment she went blonde.

There is something disingenuous about a film that goes to such lengths to recreate Monroe’s exterior so faithfully while tormenting her interior to no clear end. Why is this film so invested in her misery? How does a film as seedy as this still get made? We all lose our charms in the end, but Blonde never had any to lose.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Blonde: Explaining the Good and Bad Reviews of the Divisive Netflix Movie

Sony's Spider-Man Universe Might Be Dead, and This 'Kraven' Character Was Completely Wasted

Every 'dexter' character returning for 'original sin', 3 years later, it's safe to say critics were wrong about netflix's most popular movie of all time.

“Niagara and Marilyn Monroe… The Two Most Electrifying Sights in the World!” That was the logline for Monroe's film Niagara , plastered across the 50s cinema screen in that famous title card lettering. She was the poster girl for classical Hollywood, the sex symbol, defined by her voice, looks, sexuality, and curly blonde bob. The cultural icon with the self-fashioned name, and the high-profile relationships, dazzled in the spotlight and stunned on the silver screen. To the public, the Hollywood executives, and the outside world, she was Marilyn Monroe . Unflinching and avant-garde in front of the camera, vulnerable, troubled, and misunderstood off it.

In Andrew Dominik’s postmortem examination of Monroe’s life in Netflix’s new release Blonde , we are exposed to her perturbed existence. The film is not just a portrayal of the “behind-the-scenes” life of the actor, but a bifurcation that separates the facade of Marilyn Monroe from the anxious, insecure reality of Norma Jean. Blonde is a gothic, atmospheric exploration of a flawed superstar with a tortured spirit.

Movies are about taste, and are subject to subjectivity. The medieval poet John Lydgate supposedly exclaimed that you can “please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” Very rarely is there a unified judgment of a film, and with Dominik’s Blonde proving to be such a divisive flick among critics, what is it about one of Netflix’s most highly-anticipated movies in recent times that has divided so many?

Ana de Armas is Praised in Blonde

As one of the most highly-sought after actors of the last decade, the hopes around Ana de Armas’ portrayal of the blonde bombshell were naturally lofty. Her performance emphatically warranted the praise she has received, and it seems to be the film’s only real attribute critics can agree on. Armas’ portrait of a generational emblem achieves a sensational feat in terms of her likeness both in image and in character. Her resemblance is startling, from the bottomless chasms of her eyes as she permanently appears to be on the verge of tears to the symbolic beauty spot, red lipstick, curvaceous figure, and of course, the blonde hair-do; she is very much Monroe’s physical reincarnation.

Related: Marilyn Monroe: The Best Actors' Portrayals of the Blonde

Yet, perhaps what’s more impressive is Ana de Armas’ ability to mold herself into the diamond-shoed, sequin-dressed Hollywood sweetheart. She moves with complete grace, and speaks with the softest, whispery, falsetto of a voice, as though she finds herself perennially stuck in a library, though, some criticism has been directed at the Cuban undertones of her attempt at a Californian accent.

She wrings every morsel of pain, unease, and torment out of Monroe, conveying this confusing, torturous cocktail of emotion, from a childhood decimated by a lack of love, and from an excess of neglect. The Knives Out star successfully encompasses all of these characteristics and marries them together to create this explosion of a woman lost in a man’s world. It’s almost irrefutable that de Armas is wonderfully spellbinding as Monroe, even if it is the case that the character she is playing has fallen victim to a sadistic twisting of truth.

Blonde is Not Praised For Its Portrayal of Marilyn Monroe

Blonde, based on the 700-page novel by Joyce Carol Oates, acts more like a grandiose exposé than a biographical illustration. Issue has been majorly taken with the brutalist and sadistic nature of the movie, and how Marilyn Monroe’s mind and body have undeniably been unfairly laid bare. What plays out before us is this bizarre contradiction. In Dominik’s efforts to humanize and embellish this cultural figure through displaying her experiences of great trauma and the comprehension of her lacerated past, he in fact further dehumanizes the goddess of cinema in ways that she frequently fell victim to throughout her subjection of the misogynistic male gaze .

Related: How Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn Represented Two Types of Femininity to Hollywood

There is this persistent fixation on her reliance on and approval of men, with a ceaseless presence of “daddy issues” and her insistence on calling her lovers “daddy.” Like with so many films of a biographical nature, there’s certainly a large degree of gap-filling between the major life events we all know to be true. However, it’s the moments away from the prying public eye, away from the lenses, that are the most poignant and meaningful in truly revealing the actual character of the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes actor.

Instead, we are given an excruciating internal examination both figuratively and literally (including several POV close-ups of the insides of her vagina during an abortion), and a flagrant psychological diagnosis throughout the three-hour runtime, and we never really learn anything new about a figure known by everyone, but understood by few.

Ultimately, Blonde is a complex, and at times, flawed display of a woman adored and revered by so many, that seems to trim the positive femininity away from a pioneer in liberating women from archaic cultural expectations. It's totally understandable that the performance has been praised, but the movie hasn't. Ultimately, this is really a portrait of Norma Jean, not Marilyn Monroe, a painful movie about Norma's trials and tribulations. As she says so concisely in the film, “Some of them love Marilyn, some of them hate Marilyn… what’s that got to do with me?"

• blonde (2022)
• Marilyn Monroe

Netflix's Blonde: Why the new Marilyn Monroe film is receiving so much backlash

A run-through of all the criticism so far

Netflix's long-awaited Marilyn Monroe film Blonde has been met with a wave of backlash after arriving on Netflix. But what's the criticism about? Here's a run-through of the Blonde controversy, explained.

To recap, Blonde stars Ana de Armas in the lead role as Marilyn, with actors Bobby Cannavale and Adrien Brody appearing to play Marilyn's husbands Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller respectively. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, which is intended to be a fictionalised take on Marilyn's life.

Arriving in cinemas on 23 September, and on Netflix the following the week, the film has been at the centre of widespread controversy, with viewers and celebrities - including the likes of Emily Ratajkowski - speaking out to criticise the project.

Why is Blonde receiving so much backlash?

The fictionalised story

Underlying all the Blonde criticism is the fact that the film is a work of biographical fiction, with the Marilyn shown on screen serving as an 'avatar' or 'caricature' of the real Marilyn Monroe. Viewers have called out the film for including factually inaccurate events (due to being fictionalised) - though still using Marilyn's name and image - as well as focusing largely on her suffering.

Model and actress Emily Ratajkowski recently addressed the topic in a TikTok video, where she criticised the film for "fetishising female pain, even in death," comparing Marilyn to the likes of Amy Winehouse and Princess Diana.

The film's portrayal of sexual assault and abortion

Another large point of controversy for Blonde is its depiction of abortion and sexual assault, with both storylines thought to divert from what really happened in Marilyn's life.

The film portrays Marilyn as having had two abortions against her will, with one scene showing her 'talking' to a CGI fetus. Planned Parenthood has since criticised the film for "contributing to anti-abortion propaganda".

Caren Spruch, Planned Parenthood’s director of arts and entertainment engagement, told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement: "While abortion is safe, essential health care, anti-abortion zealots have long contributed to abortion stigma by using medically inaccurate descriptions of fetuses and pregnancy. Andrew Dominik’s new film, Blonde , bolsters their message with a CGI-talking fetus, depicted to look like a fully formed baby."

Spruce went on to add, "It is a shame that the creators of Blonde chose to contribute to anti-abortion propaganda and stigmatize people’s health care decisions instead."

Critics have also taken issue with the film's numerous depictions of sexual assault, including one scene with US president JFK which is thought to be fabricated. Viewers online have called the graphic scene "horrifying" and "disgusting", while others have once again criticised the film for including factually-inaccurate and gratuitously graphic scenes.

Have any of the Blonde creators responded to backlash?

Prior to Blonde 's release, director Andrew Dominik responded to backlash surrounding the film's high US NC-17 rating (which is one above an R-rating). However, his dismissal of the criticism has only provoked more upset from viewers.

Dominik told Screen Daily in February 2022, "It’s a demanding movie. If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the f***ing audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office. It’s an NC-17 movie about Marilyn Monroe, it’s kind of what you want, right? I want to go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story."

Following the comments, viewers also criticised Dominik for seeming to make a film based on what he wants, rather than what the audience might want.

Meanwhile, actor Adrien Brody (who plays The Playwright in Blonde ) has defended the film against criticism, particularly focusing on the traumatic plot points. Brody told The Hollywood Reporter , "[T]he novel and the film are both rife with themes of exploitation and trauma. And Marilyn’s life, unfortunately, was full of that."

He went on, "I think that since it’s told in this first-person perspective, it works somehow for the film to be a traumatic experience, because you’re inside of her — her journey and her longings and her isolation — amidst all of this adulation. It’s brave and it takes a while to digest." Brody later added that Dominik's work is "fearless filmmaking."

We have reach out to Netflix for comment.

Entertainment

Looking back 2009 was actually peak British TV

Test your 2024 knowledge with our quiz of the year

Where are The Ultimatum's Scotty and Aria now?

Are The Ultimatum's Zaina and J.R. still together?

The most anticipated romance movies of 2025

Molly-Mae says this has been worst months of life

Meet Nicholas Hoult's wife, Bryana Holly

Glen Powell's complete dating history is charming

No Good Deed ending explained

GK Barry on how I'm A Celeb helped her grow

Love Island All Stars S2 start date confirmed

Your 101 on The Day of the Jack season 2

Blonde: first trailer for ‘disturbing’ Marilyn Monroe biopic released

Netflix film, which has been called ‘startling’ by source author Joyce Carol Oates, stars Ana de Armas as the tragic actor

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email

The first trailer has launched for Blonde, Netflix’s controversial biopic of Marilyn Monroe .

Directed by Andrew Dominik, best known for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, the film stars Ana de Armas as the tragic star and is based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates , which was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize.

“There’s something in it to offend everyone,” Dominik has said about the movie which has achieved a rare NC-17 rating, afforded to films with highly graphic content, with previous examples including Showgirls and A Serbian Film. “If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the fucking audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office.”

New Zealand-born Dominik, whose films also include Chopper and the recent Nick Cave documentary This Much I Know to Be True, has expressed surprise over the rating. “It’s not like depictions of happy sexuality,” he said in May . “It’s depictions of situations that are ambiguous. And Americans are really strange when it comes to sexual behavior, don’t you think? I don’t know why. They make more porn than anyone else in the world.”

Dominik has called it the story of “how a childhood trauma shapes an adult who’s split between a public and a private self”.

When sharing her thoughts on a rough cut of the film, which is said to include a rape scene, Oates tweeted that it was “startling, brilliant, very disturbing and perhaps most surprisingly an utterly ‘feminist’ interpretation”.

Dominik has stressed that like Oates’s novel, the film is a work of fiction but “questions why she killed herself, so naturally it’s going to be disturbing” while also comparing it to Citizen Kane and Raging Bull.

The role was originally set to be played by Naomi Watts when the project started development in 2010 before Jessica Chastain took over and then de Armas was finally cast. De Armas, whose other films include Knives Out and No Time to Die, has called it “the most intense work” she has ever done. The Cuban actor has spoken about the difficulty of perfecting the accent with over nine months of dialect coaching. “I’m not going to let anybody or anything tell me I cannot dream of playing Marilyn Monroe,” she said .

The film also stars Adrien Brody as Arthur Miller, Bobby Cannavale as Joe DiMaggio and Julianne Nicholson as Gladys Pearl Baker.

Blonde is rumoured to be part of this August’s Venice film festival lineup, a tried-and-tested launchpad for many great Oscar hopes. It will be released on Netflix on 23 September.

{{topLeft}}

{{bottomLeft}}

{{topRight}}

{{bottomRight}}

{{heading}}

• Marilyn Monroe
• Ana de Armas
• Drama films
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Adrien Brody
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on WhatsApp
• Share on Messenger

{{#isVideo}} {{/isVideo}}{{#isGallery}} {{/isGallery}}{{#isAudio}} {{/isAudio}} {{#isComment}} {{/isComment}} {{headline}}

• {{ title }}
• Sign in / Register

Switch edition

• {{ displayName }}