"Blonde" on Netflix: Marilyn Monroe just a vessel?

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An icon is mauled: Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe

Photo: Netflix

Andrew Dominik's film, Blonde, about the life of Marilyn Monroe, is best thought of as a ghost train that Dominik built just for Monroe.

He lets her get into the car at the front and sends her along a route where the greatest traumas of her life are lined up chronologically: the mentally ill mother who tried to drown her as a child.

The unknown father who never gets in touch with her.

The producer who raped her at the audition.

The first husband to hit her.

The second, who only sees the revenant of his childhood love in her.

The forced abortions.

The miscarriages.

The President stuffing his penis in her mouth.

Another remarkable thing about this ghost train ride is that it lasts almost three hours and Monroe, embodied by the Cuban shooting star Ana de Armas, has to complete it topless in many moments.

Ah, and of course she won't get out alive either.

I've wondered when the last time I saw a movie was as full of disgust for its own main character as Blonde.

Pablo Larraín's Chilean film »El Club« came to mind.

But it was about pedophile priests who abused wards and still get a comfortable retirement from the Catholic Church.

It's hard to imagine what Marilyn Monroe did to deserve a film like »Blonde«.

All trauma, zero talent

Did Dominik, who up until now has mainly shot male films like »The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford«, resent her for being the most famous actress of all time?

That, 60 years after her death, she still stands for the seductive arts of cinema like no one else?

In any case, the vehemence with which Dominik films that Monroe deserves any of her fame, let alone earned it, is astounding.

In the film, a studio boss whispers after Monroe played her character on the verge of a nervous breakdown at an audition, but that wouldn't be acting at all, just a show of psychological problems.

Dominik, who wrote the screenplay based on Joyce Carol Oates' novel of the same name, seems to think the same of Monroe.

All trauma, zero talent.

It almost has a rhythm how often he incorporates scenes in which Monroe appears completely brainless.

She doesn't know what to do with an egg in the kitchen.

She cuts flowers four inches too short for the vase.

She falls lengthways with a fully loaded tray.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

In an interview with the British magazine »Sight & Sound«, which is already well-known in film circles, Dominik complained that nobody seriously watched Monroe's films.

No escape from victim status

In order to be more convincing, »Blond« didn't have to be an uplifting story about brunette Norma Jeane Mortenson, who works her way up from the poorest of circumstances to become a platinum blonde world star.

The film should only have been more interested in the contradictions of Mortenson, who created a character with Marilyn Monroe that she herself never escaped.

But Dominik doesn't even admit to Mortenson that she discovered for herself the effect she has on men (and women).

A man has to explain that to her in »Blond«: In order to lure her into a (fictitious) ménage à trois, Charlie Chaplin's son Cass (Xavier Samuel) makes her stand in front of a mirror and marvel at the perfect shape of her own breasts to discover.

Finally enlightened, she throws herself into bed with Cass and a pal.

The film had only recently shown that Norma Jeane had previously worked as a pin-up model, so obviously knows about her sex appeal and has already made money out of it.

But then he denies it again, just to keep Mortenson from escaping victim status.

moments of humanity

Much of Blonde is fictional, and Dominik has every right in the world to interpret Monroe's life.

In some scenes, in which he shoots narratively freely, he also succeeds in something special.

He then achieves a claustrophobic intensity - like when her manic mother (Julianne Nicholson) puts seven-year-old Norma Jeane in a car and steers her into the middle of a conflagration in the Hollywood Hills.

At the same time, the film spends a great deal of time recreating the most iconic photographs of Monroe's career, hopping between color and black and white and switching formats.

A great costume and set design provides almost perfect imitations of Monroe as she romps on the beach in a cardigan, sings "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in a pink satin dress, poses in a polka dot dress next to her newlywed, the author Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody). .

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Controversial Marilyn tribute on Netflix: The World's Most Unlikely BlondeBy Wolfgang Höbel

Ana de Armas disappears often enough in these pictures, the resemblance is so great.

The fact that her Cuban-Spanish accent rings through in some places was loudly criticized after the premiere of the trailer.

In the film, the accent underscores Monroe's artificiality rather than being a nuisance.

And de Arma's big, soulful eyes give the film at least moments of humanity.

But what happens behind these eyes should only be "daddy issues" for Dominik, not serious thoughts.

The real Marilyn Monroe was well-read, took action against the hate for communists in the USA and founded her own production company.

In the film, on the other hand, she whispers infantilely in the third person: »Norma Jeane is just a vessel«, Norma Jeane is just a vessel.

On the inside

A vessel for babies means this, literally.

The camera moves into Monroe's uterus twice to look at »the vessel« from the inside.

The first time it urges her when an abortion is pending.

Monroe agreed to her because otherwise she wouldn't be able to fulfill her contract with Fox.

In the operating room, however, she has doubts and wants to stop the operation, but the doctors force her to do so.

To stage an abortion on a woman who screams and defends herself with her hands and feet – that is reactionary agitation, even in times when women's right to bodily self-determination is less attacked.

But there is still trouble with the second »vessel shot« in Marilyn.

There, the camera encounters the fetus that she and Arthur Miller would have wished for had Monroe not suffered a miscarriage.

"Are you going to hurt me again this time, mom?" Dominik has the fully animated fetus say.

The extreme right in the USA, which also wants to criminalize miscarriages, could use the scenes directly for election advertising.

Which would then also found the only ones who could see this film for profit.

»Blonde« has been available on Netflix since September 28th.