Netflix’s ‘Blonde,’ Starring Ana de Armas

Ana de Armas in Blonde.
Photograph: Netflix

“Within the motion pictures, they chop you all to bits,” Ana de Armas’s Marilyn Monroe says about midway by way of Blonde. “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, however you’re not the one to place it collectively.” She’s supposedly speaking about the way in which all motion pictures are put collectively, however in fact, it’s additionally a thinly veiled reference to the way in which this explicit film has been put collectively. Or quite, not put collectively: Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is, in impact, a jigsaw puzzle about Norma Jeane Mortenson and Marilyn Monroe that has been left purposefully incomplete, seen in fascinating and terrifying fragments. And it’s chopped her to bits, virtually actually. From the flashbulbs and klieg lights and cables surrounding Marilyn that open the movie to the infinite cruelties enacted upon her physique and soul, it’s a film concerning the creation and fragmentation of identification. And it’s brutal, its lush surfaces and outdated Hollywood recreations virtually at all times giving solution to unspeakable horrors.

It’s additionally, to be clear, fiction. Blonde is predicated on Joyce Carol Oates’s 2000 novel, which takes many, many liberties with the lives of Marilyn and others. The movie doesn’t purport to be factual, and in addition to, it’s such a stylized journey by way of this character’s life that it’d be exhausting to provide you with any biographical timeline from it. (And if one did, it’d doubtless be incorrect.) These on the lookout for a biopic about Marilyn Monroe are certain to be disillusioned, confused, and/or outraged, which can clarify why Netflix has been so cautious about anyone seeing it up till its premiere on the Venice Movie Pageant. Regardless, the image will certainly gas infinite rounds of soul-pulverizing debates. In truth, it’s sort of designed to, loaded as it’s with provocations.

Blonde begins with Norma Jeane Mortenson as a younger woman being informed by her emotionally fragile, alcoholic single mom Gladys (Julianne Nicholson, in a quite unforgettable efficiency) that her actual father was a vital man with a vital identify. A photograph of him, a dashing determine with hat and mustache, hangs above Gladys’s mattress. Armed merely with the clue that her father is a giant shot who lives within the Hollywood hills, Norma Jeane will spend the rest of her days on the lookout for this man, each in the true world and thru her relationships with males, a lot of whom she calls “daddy.”

Dominik has structured the movie largely round impeccable recreations of photos from Marilyn’s profession, however every recreation then offers solution to one thing terrifying. Blonde is full of lovely sequences adopted by photos that trigger precise ache to observe. The well-known subway-grate sequence from The Seven Yr Itch successfully turns into an prolonged, slow-motion public peep present, as an infinite sea of photographers and onlookers gawk at her. The track “Bye, Bye Child” from Gents Desire Blondes turns into a reference to the abortion she reluctantly has to be able to do the image (and in addition as a result of she fears her mom’s insanity could be genetic). Norma Jeane seeks love and acceptance by way of the picture of Marilyn, which then offers the general public entry to probably the most intimate corners of her life. The movie claims that entry, too. It even goes … into her cervix to point out the aforementioned abortion. Like I stated, the film hurts.

The three central romantic relationships right here — a delirious, prolonged threesome with attractive Hollywood scions Charles Chaplin Jr. (Xavier Samuel) and Edward G. Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams); a bodily abusive marriage to Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale); an emotionally codependent marriage to Arthur Miller (a splendidly brooding Adrien Brody) — all converse to her ongoing efforts to outline herself. The sons of film stars might really feel the oppressive stress of getting well-known fathers, however to Norma Jeane, they at the very least know precisely who they’re. DiMaggio has used baseball to create a personality in a means just like Marilyn. (“I’m one of many winners of the American lottery,” he declares.) And Miller is, in his personal means, additionally looking out: He’s looking for a sure Magda that he beloved in his childhood; he finds her in Marilyn, whom he calls “my Magda,” whereas she finds yet one more model of “daddy” in him. And these males all declare completely different sorts of possession over her. The juniors discover her sexually. DiMaggio beats her mercilessly. Miller takes her phrases and places them into his performs with out telling her.

Whether or not in marriage or in different affairs, Norma Jeane hardly ever has any company. The bottom by no means feels secure underneath her toes. She is offered for the fixed salivation of males, their huge eyes leering and surreally engorged mouths gaping. And people are simply the bystanders. When she’s launched to studio head “Mr. Z” (presumably, Daryl Zanuck), he instantly bends her over and rapes her; I don’t suppose he even bothers to say hi there. Later, she will probably be ferried into John F. Kennedy’s resort room by two Secret Service brokers, who at one level truly carry her a number of inches off the ground as they ship her (in her phrases, like “a bit of meat”) to the president, who then makes her fellate him (in close-up) whereas he watches protection of nuclear missiles on TV and listens to a person (J. Edgar Hoover, one assumes) berate him over the telephone for allegations of sexual impropriety. Afterward, Marilyn is carried out once more, groggy and wounded, the digicam drifting and spinning round her. At occasions, the film appears like a slaughterhouse seen from the animal’s viewpoint.

There’s one thing repetitive about all this, to make certain, however Blonde isn’t tedious or boring. Dominik’s visible and sonic creativeness work extra time to show every sequence into an expressionistic and expressive journey, gorgeously shot dream-factory fantasies slipping into labyrinthine horrors. (The drifting, gently wailing rating by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis helps, too.) But additionally, Ana de Armas wins us over. Her efficiency shouldn’t be fairly what one may anticipate. She’s actually dedicated absolutely to a component that requires intense physicality, tons of nudity, and tears. And he or she expertly mimics Monroe’s half-breathless type of talking. However she nonetheless has traces of her accent, which the movie doesn’t cover. That provides the entire endeavor a considerably performative high quality … which, in fact, is the purpose of the film. Ana de Armas doesn’t inhabit the position of Marilyn Monroe. Relatively, the position of Marilyn Monroe inhabits Ana de Armas — like a tortured, probably malevolent spirit.

Blonde is gorgeous, mesmerizing, and, at occasions, deeply transferring. Nevertheless it’s additionally alienating — once more, by design — consistently turning the digicam on the viewer, typically with Marilyn straight addressing it. That’s going to be a tricky promote, particularly for a movie that’s so nonlinear and elliptical. (The 2 semi-biopics I used to be reminded of had been Michael Mann’s Ali and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson, each difficult meditations on the brutal value of self-actualization.) However someplace on the film’s core, for all of the ghastly horrors it holds, is a deeply relatable thought. Norma Jeane’s seek for a nonexistent father, and the varied substitutes she finds alongside the way in which, winds and winds and winds (and winds and winds) till it turns into one thing way more cosmic concerning the seek for belonging within the maze-like heartbreak of this world. For these of us who join with that concept, the movie will do greater than damage us — it is going to destroy us.