BLONDE

Stars: Ana de Armas, Bobby Carnavale, Adrien Brody, Lily Fisher, Dan Butler, Xavier Samuel, Evan Williams and Julianne Nicholson.
Writer: Andrew Dominik, based upon the novel by Joyce Carroll Oates.
Director: Andrew Dominik

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Andrew Dominik has spent the best part of a decade writing his adaptation of Joyce Carroll Oates novel or, as she calls, fictional biography; a mighty 700+ pager that reinterpreted the real-world celebrity of Marilyn Monroe as a case study of abuse, mental torment and workplace exploitation. Hollywood and, in one of many shocking sequences, Washington DC, discovered a pliable public goddess figure in the industrially-crafted form of ‘Marilyn Monroe’, deciding early on that the impact upon the emotionally fragile woman that was Norma Jean Baker was inconsequential.

That is the version of the Monroe mythology that Dominik is undertaking in his bold, occasionally brilliant, sometimes infuriating 2.5 hour wallow in fame deconstruction. It is a film full of people who, like the American public since Monroe first appeared on screen in Don’t Bother to Knock, fall willingly and blindly in love with false idols. In tearing down the carefully manufactured facade that was ‘Marilyn Monroe’, he is also merciless in his depiction of baseball great Joe Di Maggio (Bobby Carnavale) and President JFK (Casper Phillipson), fellow icons of America’s golden post-war years.

Enduring the tortuous mental deterioration as Dominik’s Marilyn is Ana de Armas, and the actress is both entirely at one with her director’s vision and, more often than not, significantly better than it. While there are legitimate issues that one may have with Dominik’s style or structure or perceived intent, there can be no reservations as to the bravery and depth of character that de Armas demands of herself. Physically, she is as cinematically luminous as Monroe at her most photogenic, while also offering a stark portrayal of an emotionally incomplete and constantly deteriorating victim of lifelong abuse and loneliness.

The Marilyn Monroe biopic that captures her business acumen and comic timing and acting prowess, aspects of her life that critics have noted is absent from BLONDE, is another film entirely; Dominik’s wildly ambitious work is the story of what the American entertainment industry is willing to do to draw every last drop of humanity out of those it selects to exploit. It is a sad, bitter, horrible tale, which is not how those invested in her legend want to see Marilyn portrayed. But it is a version of her life that is as important in its telling as the perpetuation of her screen-goddess myth.