Ana de Armas is a very inspired choice for the role of Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. She has all of the fragility, beauty and intensity that are needed in order to emotionally translate this tumultuous existence. She’s a complex actress, and she often doesn’t have to say or do anything in order to convey the strongest of moods. However, this inspired choice is just about the only one that’s made in this Netflix-produced feature film. It’s a product that strives to be artistically subtle and skillful, but the only thing that it manages to do is to repeatedly and superficially line up moments from the famous actress’ life, a sex symbol of her generation, that are (almost) exclusively traumatic.

What is the meaning of this status – of being a sex symbol during a period in time that was profoundly patriarchal and abusive, when a beautiful woman was subjected to objectification, used and disrespected? This question doesn’t seem to be paramount in this adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ lengthy 1999 biographical novel. Can it be possible that her life only consisted of negative events? A hardly believable hypothesis.

Netflix always aligns itself with trends, and it commendably chooses to fight for womens’ rights, but, in this case, simply espousing this attitude is not enough for it to construct a powerful and nuanced film. This time around, the company’s activist ethos springs back like a boomerang, because it’s simply focusing on purely traumatic moments, where there is no single pleasurable moment in the pop diva’s life to be seen. And even the most unfortunate of individuals has their small glimpses of relaxation, where they forget about their problems for a little while.

de Armas is forced to maintain herself in a constant state of crisis, in a series of conjectures and entourages where she is always portrayed as the most unstable person in the room. She is unable to find her place, anywhere. The film’s motivation remains however unclear: is it a manifesto against the various abuses to which so many women have been subjected to, and still are, or is it a fable about a fragile being that just throws herself into the arms of the first man who is even vaguely civilized towards her? Two extremes that render women’s, and in particular, Marilyn Monroe’s image even more fragile, because the film rather falls into the trap of bluntly exploiting her traumas, turning them into mere trophies.

Despite the fact that it’s helmed by an experienced filmmaker (Andrew Dominik was also the one who directed the sensitive, yes rather pretentious The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), Blonde ends up burdened by such useless preconceived notions, starting from the choice of its title and going up to every single little narrative detail. The protagonist comes across like the prototypal unintelligent person, who is maneuvered by those around her, and subjected to their will. As such, she becomes an object. Naturally, this scheme becomes reprehensible, especially considering the fact that we are not allowed to glimpse at the inner workings of her psyche. The film doesn’t seem to try to understand her at a human level.

With a mechanistic, cold, and distant gaze, Blonde looks towards Marylin Monroe’s traumas with an incomprehensible sense of satisfaction. The film’s attitude, in and of itself, is similar to the one that the great American studios had at the time: it’s disinterested in her mind, and it speculates the appearance of Ana de Armas, who is strikingly similar to the original. It’s highly likely that this is the peak role of the Cuban-origins actress’ career, both in terms of mythical dimensions as well as in terms of actual performance. She shows herself as being willing to transport herself into as many moods and positions as needed, and it’s all the more a shame that this dramatic, even tragic potential is exploited in ways that are ungainly, speaking in narrative and formal terms.

The script tries to convey the diva’s helplessness when it comes to escaping a given conjecture, but does so in a wholly unconvincing way. 

This is where an ultimately delicate aspect comes into play: the fact that it recycles moments that have entered history. And that features a person so famous that we all have the impression that we know everything about them, but it just might be that we’re all mistaken. There are a few legendary moments that have been exhaustively discussed in the media – like her sensual performance of “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” in front of John F. Kennedy (which is omitted here), or her famous poses with the fluttering white dress on the sidewalk (which appears as a metaphor) –, but aside from that, we really have no clue who Marilyn Monroe truly was, or what her thoughts were. As such, we relate to her through this cliche projection that is constantly promoted, over and over again.

The film doesn’t manage to clarify much, but rather, it managed to deepen any dilemmas, and does so by creating a pastiche from the works of the greatest auteurs that worked in the vein of audiovisual poetry, like Terrence Malick, for example. The film tries to be daring and indie, but it only ends up proving that it has no idea how to do it.

This ideological problem – which ends up spilling over into the content – is doubled by a strange, confused artistic intention.

At a stylistic level, Blonde is built like a salad with many ingredients, and whether its many elements work together or not, they are nonetheless all thrown in together. Metaphoric scenes followed by ones that are as realistic as can get, followed by mental conjunctions and, last but not least, by insertions that are almost documentary-like. It’s a cycle that goes around in a loop, way too many times across its almost three-hour-long run. The screen shifts from 4:3 to 16:9, and then to ultra-wide. Everything should have come together harmoniously, but that simply does not happen. Color sequences are followed by ones shot in black and white, without any apparent logic to it. The rhythm is also alternating, just like the types of lenses – along with, implicitly, the types of framing. This chaotic construction comes across as amateuristic: the artistic team looks like it wanted to prove that it’s capable of doing just about anything, but that it couldn’t settle upon a unitary style.

Given these forced narrative and stylistic choices, it’s almost inevitable that Blonde ends up conveying little to nothing. It’s dull, flat, soulless, and, in what perhaps amounts to its greatest sin, is ostentatious in its mediocrity. It fancies itself, without any arguments to back it up, as a sensitive and revolutionary film, despite the fact that it brings nothing new to the debates surrounding Marilyn.

Considering all of this, the fact that such a film managed to bypass the filters set in place by Netflix and then went on to compete in the selection of the Venice Film Festival becomes incomprehensible, even revolting. Its validation should set the ground for an honest debate on the revisitation and remodeling of certain criteria in cinematic production and distribution.

I watched Blonde with the good will of one trying to discover something relevant about one of the most controversial personalities of the 20th century, a human being that was tormented in too many ways, who maybe passed away because she couldn’t take it anymore, because she was unable to go on. This makes it all the more unacceptable that such a topic ends up failing with such grace. That the artistic team is much more preoccupied with the female body rather than female mind is not necessarily a problem, in and of itself, but if you choose a path like this, at least do it properly, by contributing to it in a unique and assertive way.

Towards the very end, the conspiracy theory – according to which Marilyn was murdered by the FBI – just pops out of nowhere. Then, while the credits start rolling, spectators cannot even begin to fathom what the purpose of this project even is…

Ion Indolean

Ion Indolean has a degree in film studies and a PhD in history. He teaches at the Faculty of Theatre and Film, UBB. He contributes to Observator cultural, PressOne, LiterNet and is active in the organization of TIFF festival. He directed the features Toni & Friends (2020), premiered in Warsaw, and Discordia (2016), awarded for debut at TIFF. He enjoys watching any "bad" commercial film. He has seen, like any self-respecting millennial, Bloodsport with van Damme about 30 times. In high school, he left White Ribbon in horror, only for Haneke to become one of his favorite directors.