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But of course this is all about Monroe, one of the most famous women of the 20th century, and it revisits her fame and life - Bobby Cannavale plays a character based on Joe DiMaggio, and Adrien Brody on Arthur Miller - with enough fidelity to suggest that Dominik is working in good faith when he’s simply exploiting her anew.Īs camera flash bulbs pop, flooding the screen white, Dominik shows some fleeting images of the crowd and then cuts to Marilyn as her dress billows. “Blonde” doesn’t announce itself as fiction right off, though it carries the usual mealy-mouthed disclaimer in the credits. Watching “Blonde,” I wondered if Dominik had ever actually watched a Marilyn Monroe film, had seen the transcendent talent, the brilliant comic timing, the phrasing, gestures and grace?įictionalized histories play with the truth, hence the hedges that filmmakers stick on movies, that they’re “inspired by” or “based on” the truth. (As Anthony Summers points out in his book “Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe,” she formed her own corporation: Marilyn Monroe Productions, Inc.) Mostly, what’s missing is any sense of what made Monroe more than just another beautiful woman in Hollywood: her genius.

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In the introduction to the book, the critic Elaine Showalter writes that Oates used Monroe as “an emblem of twentieth-century America.” A woman, Showalter later adds without much conviction, “who was much more than a victim.”Īll that’s missing from this portrait is, well, everything else, including Monroe’s personality and inner life, her intelligence, her wit and savvy and tenacity her interest in - and knowledge of - politics the work that she put in as an actress and the true depth of her professional ambitions. She cooks up a ménage a trois for Monroe and channels her ostensible thoughts, including during a lurid tryst with an unkind President John F. In the novel, Oates draws from the historical record but likewise plays with facts. “Blonde” is based on the 2000 Joyce Carol Oates hefty (the original hardback is 738 pages) fictionalized account of Monroe’s life. Zanuck, the longtime head of 20th Century Fox studio, where Monroe became a star. Soon after she steps onto a lot, she is raped by a man, here called Mr. She models for cheesecake magazines, and before long breaks into the film industry, which is another nightmare. Childhood is a horror show - Gladys is cold, violent - but Norma Jeane crawls into adulthood (a fine if overwhelmed Ana de Armas).

Dead blonde movie#

“Blonde” goes for a more comprehensive biopic sweep - it runs nearly three hours - embracing a bleakly familiar trajectory that begins with Monroe’s unhappy childhood, revisits her dazzling yet progressively fraught fame, her depressingly abusive relationships, myriad health issues and catastrophic downward spiral.Īfter a brief prelude that introduces Marilyn at the height of her fame, the movie rewinds to the sad, lonely little girl named Norma Jeane, with a terrifying, mentally unstable single mother, Gladys (Julianne Nicholson). Three years ago in the biopic “Judy,” Renée Zellweger played Judy Garland near the end of her troubled life. Given that the industry has also always loved making movies about its own machinery, it’s no surprise that it also likes making movies about its victims and martyrs. Hollywood has always eaten its own, including its dead. Given all the indignities and horrors that Marilyn Monroe endured during her 36 years - her family tragedies, paternal absence, maternal abuse, time in an orphanage, time in foster homes, spells of poverty, unworthy film roles, insults about her intelligence, struggles with mental illness, problems with substance abuse, sexual assault, the slavering attention of insatiable fans - it is a relief that she didn’t have to suffer through the vulgarities of “Blonde,” the latest necrophiliac entertainment to exploit her.