The Misinterpretation of Marilyn Monroe: Blonde

On the 28th of September, 2022, ‘Blonde’ (the movie) was released onto Netflix. The movie is directed by Andrew Dominik and is based on the book “Blonde” by Joyce Carol Oates. The movie stars many famous names including Ana de Armas (Marilyn Monroe), Adrien Bordy, Bobby Cannavale, Xavier Samuel, and Julianne Nicholson. The movie is incredibly long (two hours and 46 minutes) and is rated 18+ in the United Arab Emirates. Given that it is a fictional rundown of Marylin Monroe’s life, it fits into the genres of biography, drama and romance and is mostly produced in black and white. After its release, it was given a Rotten tomato rating of 42% (tomatometer) and a 5.5/10 total rating. 

To evaluate the movie, it is important to look at 3 main components; Acting, movie plot, cinematography and sound track.

Acting

From the beginning of the movie, the plot followed Ana de Armas who acted as Norma Jean, who is better known as Marliyn Monroe. Ana de Armas accurately portrayed the book’s Marilyn Monroe to an Oscar worthy extent, in some cases. She dove into the role and took on emotions that seemed genuine to what the character of Marilyn Monroe was feeling. Overall, her portrayal of Marliyn Monroe was on point with the exception of her accent as it was slightly off. 

Movie Plot 

The building blocks of a movie is its plot. It is important to note that this movie is not a real life biography of the life of Marlyin Monroe, but is a “movie version” of the book ‘Blonde’ written by Joyce Carol Oates. Watching the full movie in one sitting is, in my opinion, nearly impossible. The movie encompases a wide collection of Mariylin Monroe’s most traumatic experiences instilling heavy emotions in the audience. In addition, the plot leads to some very dark and uncomfortable scenes that result in the character’s exploitation. No empathy was shown to Monroe in this one sided rendition of her story. Furthermore, the plot was a bit messy as there were consecutive scenes that weren’t related to one another, creating confusion. The movie is a “collection of her tramas” and is made to be quite disturbing. The small instances that focused on Marylin Monroe’s intelligence and achievements may have been a good way to humanize the story, but, once again, it is important to note that the movie is solely based on the book “Blonde”. 

Cinematography

The movie is mostly set in a 80’s screen frame (centered in the middle of the screen instead of the full screen). It includes many artistic shots and shifts from colored to black and white throughout the movie. Although it was quite well made, It seemed like the producers were trying a bit too hard with the artistic direction. 

Sound track 

Similar to any other movie, the soundtrack and the background music play an important role in conveying the plot of the movie and communicating the emotions to the audience. The sound track of the movie is very authentic to the setting and was very useful in swaying the audience’s emotions in correlation to the emotions of the scene. In general, the sound track is very well put together and holds a positive impact on the overall movie. 

In conclusion, I would rate the movie ‘Blonde’ 5/10. Although the artistic features of the movie could potentially be rewarded on a larger scale, the movie plot makes the movie hard to enjoy as it seems that Marylin Monroe is treated more like an object rather than a person.