Blonde

The perfect film to watch with a phone and the pause button.

When Monroe is negotiating a higher rate for her role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – as she points out, she is the blonde being preferred – we see another personality, one which demonstrates a shrewdness and humour that must have been necessary for her to endure as long as she did at the level she was at. Her performance is a life raft. The film is interesting because Monroe’s life is interesting; most things involving film stars, famous athletes and presidents are. He thought she was hot, but treated her like a kid! Was she actually in a three-way relationship with Charlie Chaplin Jr. And so we come to Blonde, the latest production to take on Monroe, who, as the film poster notes, was “watched by all, seen by none.”

Rather than being a traditional biopic, the film is an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' fictionalised novel of the same name – mixing fact with fiction to paint ...

[subscribe now](http://radiotimes.com/magazine-subscription?utm_term=evergreen-article) and get the next 12 issues for only £1. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the [Radio Times podcast](https://www.radiotimes.com/podcasts/). [Film](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/) coverage or visit our [TV Guide](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/tv-listings/) to see what's on tonight. Even the actual identity of her father has not always been certain. See my attorney.'" [How to watch new Marilyn Monroe drama Blonde](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/how-to-watch-blonde-netflix/) [Blonde review: A brutal but beautiful look at Marilyn Monroe](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/blonde-review-netflix/) [Did Blonde's Marilyn Monroe and John F Kennedy story actually happen?](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/blonde-marilyn-monroe-john-f-kennedy-true-story-netflix/) He wouldn’t recognise her, he said ‘No, I don’t know who you are. [terms and conditions](https://www.immediate.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/) and [privacy policy](https://policies.immediate.co.uk/privacy/). [Variety](https://variety.com/2022/tv/global/marilyn-monroe-documentary-charles-stanley-gifford-mediawan-1235222789/) that the evidence was "irrefutable". [Blonde](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/blonde-movie-release-date-netflix-marilyn-monroe/) finally arrived on Netflix on Wednesday 28th September 2022.

Blonde movie review: Ana de Armas channels Marilyn Monroe in director Andrew Dominik's complex 'biopic', which defies Hollywood tradition with the force of ...

De Armas has somehow summoned the spirit of Marilyn Monroe herself to take control of her body, and the result is stunning. The camera in the final shot gives the impression of being physically removed from its tripod and placed on the floor, as if the filmmaker is saying, “The show’s over. Determined to halt the generational trauma that she has inherited from her mother, Marilyn is conflicted between the desire to have a child and give it the life that she never had, and the fear that she might instead end up giving it the life that she actually did. In the most memorable of these sequences, she frolics on the beach with playwright Arthur Miller — her third husband — and discovers that she is pregnant, as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds swoon. Dominik also reclaims some of the most iconic moments in Marilyn’s life from the perverts and the paparazzi that authored them. Pulling the curtain on that famous photograph of her in the white dress, the filmmaker reveals that it was staged as an open-air ogle-fest where thousands of frenzied men nearly trampled upon each other to catch a glimpse up her skirt. It’s a mood piece, a tone poem, and in a year that has given us the almost unbearable [Elvis](https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/hollywood/elvis-baz-luhrmann-bizarre-biopic-is-like-sanju-kgf-7995798/), it’s a feral shriek of dissent against formulaic Hollywood biopics. But later, they seemingly make up for it by having a drugged Marilyn puke directly on the lens, ostensibly on you and I. Blonde is very much a #MeToo movie that presents Marilyn and her daddy issues as an archetype. If that film was a meditation on stardom made to cosplay as a revisionist Western, Blonde is a meditation on celebrity culture that channels the elevated horror films of Ari Aster and David Lynch. And it takes a while to acclimatise to the film’s inhospitable temperature — it opens with a haunting sequence in which young Marilyn’s mother drives them directly into flames because she wants to see ‘hell up close’, and subsequently busies itself by subjecting Marilyn to a sustained series of nightmarish intrusions into her life. [The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford](https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/hollywood/the-assassination-of-jesse-james-by-the-coward-robert-ford-brad-pitt-casey-affleck-andrew-dominik-film-about-celebrity-culture-8175441/).

It has been a Year of Marilyn, full of tributes and homages, but "Blonde" explores the darker side of the entertainment icon.

And of course, it comes to the now-familiar conclusion that there was much more to the story than was apparent at the time. But Dominik’s film certainly meets Bolton’s other expectation: “Respect and fidelity to the complexity of the person.” Still, “Blonde” the movie covers many of the major known tragedies and trials of Monroe’s real life, such as her mother’s mental illness as well as her own, her failed marriages, her substance-abuse issues and her unrealized desire to become a parent. (It skips over a few famous beats, too, such as Monroe’s early marriage in her teenage years to a policeman — as well as the fact that she had half-siblings, one of whom she reconnected with later in life. Vogue recently heralded [“Barbiecore”](https://www.vogue.com/article/barbie-fashion-is-everywhere-this-summer) as the hottest trend of summertime, and a TikTok genre known as “BimboTok” was the subject of many a concerned-but-fascinated [trend story](https://www.thecut.com/2021/12/reclaiming-bimbo-bimbotok.html) [in 2022](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/bimbo-reclaim-tiktok-gen-z-1092253/). But the genre does seem to take cues from Monroe’s bubbly public persona — and her apparent enjoyment of being a beautiful, hyperfeminine woman. “Blonde,” however clumsily, attempts to answer that question, as it’s the rare Monroe tribute that looks closely at the mortal person behind the immortal image. Chrissy Chlapecka, 22, is one of the most prominent TikTokers associated with BimboTok, and she names Monroe among her lifelong inspirations. Her image has “come to stand for the very essence of glamour and beauty,” Bolton says, while her life story “stands for the classic hard-luck, rags-to-riches” tale of making it big in Hollywood. “I have noticed once again that clothing is coming around to the ’60s,” says Donelle Dadigan, president and founder of the Hollywood Museum in California (where interest in the Monroe items spikes yearly in June around her birthday). But none of this year’s moments of Marilyn fixation have engaged quite as directly with the latter as “Blonde,” which focuses on Norma Jeane Baker, the woman who became Marilyn Monroe. A few forces have converged this year to create a period of renewed fascination with Monroe — or perhaps more accurately, with Monroe iconography.

Andrew Dominik's adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates's novel 'Blonde' is out on Netflix.

In Blonde, we gaze de Armas in wonderment rather than with lasciviousness, and forget the movie she is in. One of the foetuses even talks to Marilyn from inside the womb. The 167-minute film is singularly incurious about Marilyn’s involvement in her choices. The director even conceptualises a point-of-view shot of a doctor peering into Monroe’s innards – a pointless, not to mention deeply exploitative moment. The single-most powerful element of Blonde, which sustains it through banality, dime-store psychology and increasingly discomfiting moments of suffering, is its fearless lead actor. There are repeated graphic representations of the foetuses that Marilyn is unable to keep. Monroe continues to be the subject of study and speculation decades after she died of an accidental overdose of barbiturates in 1962. She’s ultimately just a girl, standing in front of a photograph of her lost father, asking him to find her. Blonde, in telling the story of the actor born as Norma Jean Baker, is an attempted study of personhood. The only man shown to treat Marilyn with fairness is her make-up artist Whitey (Toby Huss). Blonde has emerged in the middle of a fierce debate over abortion rights in the United States. Marilyn finds that the “dumb blonde” image insisted upon by producers makes it difficult for her to be taken seriously.

Andrew Dominik's 'Blonde' clocks at 166 minutes and feels almost twice as long. Some of the early reviews disparagingly called the movie 'misery porn' or ...

But as far as films on public figures go, it has nothing substantial or compelling to say that would make it a film worthy of Monroe. 'Blonde' is not a bad film. In short, 'Blonde' is not a biopic, clinging to the alleged truthfulness of the events like many biopics inevitably do. 'Blonde' is also a good-looking movie. Monroe is a figure that a film based on her life would feel lacking if her glorious and tragic life was not depicted in its unvarnished form. Due to accounts of her life, we know that beneath the glittering, smiling exterior, she was a mentally ill, lonely wreck of a woman.

Blonde, a movie that reimagines the life of the iconic star Marilyn Monroe, starring Ana de Armas, is rated NC-17 on the subscription-based service Netflix.

The views expressed here are that of the respective authors/ entities and do not represent the views of Economic Times (ET). The actress also said that Blonde is supposed to create controversy and discomfort. But why exactly is "Blonde" rated NC-17? ET hereby disclaims any and all warranties, express or implied, relating to the report and any content therein. - What is the movie Blonde about? [Ana de Armas](/topic/ana-de-armas)'s starrer [Blonde](/topic/blonde), in which she plays the role of the iconic [Hollywood](/topic/hollywood)icon [Marilyn Monroe](/topic/marilyn-monroe), is currently rated NC-17 on [Netflix](/news/netflix-news).

It comes towards the end of Blonde, Andrew Dominik's brutal and explicit fictionalisation of the life of Marilyn Monroe.

Watching it back, three weeks after I first saw it — not least in the wake of a press tour in which Dominik has been One certainly hasn't seen such an unflattering portrayal of Kennedy, already the subject of a cornucopia of fictional portrayals and feature documentaries, across media. — there's a Hitchcockian cutaway to the televised craft pointing to the sky, newly erect. But one scene, coming towards the end of Blonde, is especially ripe for debate. Broader commentary on modern celebrity aside, should such a loosely interpreted version of the life of a quintessential cultural figure be presented as reality, as the [Blonde](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/netflix-blonde-marilyn-monroe) press tour and marketing have seemingly implied? [Blonde](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/blonde-netflix-review-marilyn-monroe) hits laptop screens across the globe with its premiere on Netflix, the ethical discourse around Andrew Dominik's fictionalised, impressionistic Marilyn Monroe not-a-biopic continues apace.

Blonde Twitter Review and Reactions: Ana De Armas stars in the Netflix biopic on Marilyn Monroe. The movie is thought to earn Armas her first Oscar ...

Fans who have been able to watch the movie have been sharing their reviews of it. There have been mixed responses to the film, but unanimous praise for Armas and how she has delivered in the demanding and challenging role. Now, as the film started to stream on the digital platform, many viewers have been sharing their opinion on it.

She was an actress of uncommon talent. But once again a director is more interested in examining her body (literally, in this case) than getting inside her ...

Monroe’s life was tough, but there was more to it than Dominik grasps, the proof of which is in the films she left behind — “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “How to Marry a Millionaire,” “Some Like It Hot,” “The Misfits” — the whole damn filmography. But by so insistently erasing the divide between these realms, Dominik ends up reducing Marilyn to the very image — the goddess, the sexpot, the pinup, the commodity — that he also seems to be trying to critique. Dominik does get around to showing her face, which is beaming as the camera points up toward Marilyn in outward supplication. The movie opens with a short black-and-white sequence that re-creates the night Monroe filmed the most famous scene in Billy Wilder’s garish 1955 comedy, “The Seven Year Itch,” about a married man lusting after a neighbor played by Monroe. 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.” His Norma Jeane — and her glamorous, vexed creation, Marilyn Monroe — is almost nothing more than a victim: As the years passed and even as her fame grows, she is mistreated again and again, even by those who claim to love her. 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? 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. “Blonde” doesn’t announce itself as fiction right off, though it carries the usual mealy-mouthed disclaimer in the credits. (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. After 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).

The new movie by Andrew Dominik is not a mere fictionalization of Marilyn Monroe's life. It's negligence.

And yet the likelihood that it played out in such a demeaning manner as depicted in Blonde—Monroe is referred to as a “dirty slut” while she performs forced oral sex—is low. We barely get to watch her impressive career play out, nor her devotion to the craft of acting—only the moments in which she decries “Marilyn Monroe” as a fiction. But instead of clasping the child to them, they start punishing the child.” Blonde is the punishment of a negligent parent, dragging Monroe’s image through all her real-life horrors (and several fabricated ones) in the name of an abstract truth Dominik seeks but never realizes in his film. This much, as depicted in Blonde, is true: During the course of her career, Monroe became addicted to prescription drugs, which she often took with alcohol. Perhaps one of the most cringe-inducing narrative choices Blonde makes is the decision to have De Armas’ Monroe call every man in her life “daddy,” an on-the-nose allusion to her daddy issues. But Blonde extends this trend to other men, including her talent agent, suggesting that her childlike helplessness diminished her in the presence of any male in her orbit. Hollywood’s production codes extended to women’s reproduction.” It’s a shame that what was (and is) such a pertinent women’s rights issue in Hollywood is examined with such little nuance in Blonde. Through much of her young life, Monroe lived in foster homes and orphanages, particularly after Baker suffered a mental break in 1934, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and was committed to a state hospital. But there are too many scenes in which she’s asked only to shrivel and shriek and bleed and vomit as she’s dragged and batted between set pieces, and so the image audiences are left with is one of Monroe as little more than a doll. It’s not the moments of strength.” (In a separate interview with [Vanity Fair](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/09/how-ana-de-armas-became-marilyn-monroe-blonde), he says, “There’s nothing sentimental here. But all too often, audiences lack these tools; and in the case of Monroe in particular, the details of her life and death are already the subject of decades-spanning debate. To approximate a real person is to approach a sacred image; to twist and warp it is a risk.

A fact-check of Andrew Dominik's new Netflix movie, 'Blonde,' starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe.

In the context of the film, the role is a burden to her — to the extent that she slashes her face with her own nails on set. There is only one indication that they might have: Monroe’s friend and masseur Ralph Roberts told Spoto that she called him up from a romantic excursion to Bing Crosby’s Palm Springs estate, during which she was sharing a bedroom with the president. He’s on the phone and barely pays attention to her as he cajoles her into a blowjob. “One can imagine her sacrificing contraception and her own safety to spontaneity, magic, and the sexual satisfaction of the man she was with,” Steinem wrote. Dominik takes an almost sadistic interest in documenting the abortions the Monroe of the movie has — one after she is pregnant with either Cass’s or Eddy’s child and the other during her affair with President John F. In one of the few scenes in Blonde in which Monroe seems to assert herself, she is angry that Russell, who was on loan from a different studio, is being offered more money to star in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Yes, she sang the song “Everybody Needs a Da-Da-Daddy” in the 1948 movie Ladies of the Chorus, which Dominik deploys in Blonde as Monroe enters the world of Hollywood and is promptly assaulted by a studio head implied to be Darryl Zanuck. She was often late and would request a lot of takes to get her performance right. Casillo, however, argues that Monroe’s anger was less about money and more about the fact that the studio, 20th Century Fox, undervalued her to the extent that she wasn’t even given her own private dressing room. The intention is to be an impressionistic portrait of the actress and icon — more reflective of what she represented and how she suffered than who she actually was as a person. Another biographer, Donald Spoto, author of 1993’s Marilyn Monroe: The Biography, disputes the claim that Gifford was Monroe’s father, but he does acknowledge that Gladys hung a photo of Gifford in their home. There are biopics that aim to present a mostly factual version of a person’s life (think Walk the Line).

As one of Hollywood's sex symbols, it's not difficult to imagine the horrors and trauma that Norma Jeane Mortenson might have faced as an actor finding her way ...

Considering that Marilyn Monroe is one of the most celebrated and beloved actresses of her time, there is never a single moment in this movie (that follows her through the height of her career) when she feels triumphant. As a woman watching this and as a lover of Marilyn Monroe, this felt like torture. None of the people in her life — except for maybe her makeup artist Whitey, aka Allan Snyder (Toby Huss) — is there to comfort her or help her or love her. Men want to possess her or fix her or hurt her, women want to hate her and shame her. De Armas is a duplicate of Monroe in some scenes, with it nearly being impossible to tell the difference between her and the real Monroe. She's crying for the entire movie, and you want to cry with her for the way they're butchering Monroe's legacy. Monroe is perpetually surrounded by men; the only women in her life abandon her or make fun of her. However, it is marketed as a historical film, and it's not really emphasized to its audience that it's based on a fictional story about Monroe by Joyce Carol Oates. The fact that those moments feel so genuine makes it even more painful that the movie doesn't linger in them and instead chooses to shock and sensationalize. Chayze Irvin's camera work is often dreamlike and the constantly shifting perspectives, aspect ratios, and jumping between black and white and color adds to the chaotic nature of the story. If you ever wanted a lesson in what the male gaze looks like, this movie is the prime example. [Blonde](https://collider.com/tag/blonde/) portrays [Marilyn Monroe](https://collider.com/tag/marilyn-monroe/) as a lifelong victim.

Ana de Armas is scintillating in a film that tells the story of pop-culture icon Marilyn Monroe, but 'Blonde' hardly explores who Norma Jeane truly is ...

(Evan Williams) and Cass Chaplin (Xavier Samuel), the son of Charlie Chaplin, are also dwelt upon. It dips into the imagined psyche of a woman who represented different things to people of all races, gender and sexual orientation. While wanting to look at the life of Marilyn Monroe and the reason for her enduring legend, Blonde lingers on the luscious curves, the tear-filled eyes, the wet pout, and the many men who exploited her, but not telling us anything about the woman inside.