{"id":76805,"date":"2022-09-24T13:16:02","date_gmt":"2022-09-24T13:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/marilyn-monroe-fascination-comes-to-netflix-with-blonde\/"},"modified":"2022-09-24T13:16:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-24T13:16:02","slug":"marilyn-monroe-fascination-comes-to-netflix-with-blonde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/marilyn-monroe-fascination-comes-to-netflix-with-blonde\/","title":{"rendered":"Marilyn Monroe fascination comes to Netflix with ‘Blonde’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Marilyn Monroe has been dead for 60 years, but there is still a kind of madness around her that remains. Just look at the frenzied discourse around \u201cBlonde,\u201d an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ fictional portrait of the Hollywood star that has yet to be seen by the general public.<\/p>\n

There was intrigue around its NC-17 rating and the reasons for its long delay in release (it was filmed before the pandemic). There was curiosity about its star, Ana de Armas, and her native Cuban accent slipping through in the trailer. Meanwhile, its director Andrew Dominik, who has been trying to make this movie for well over a decade, was calling it a masterpiece. <\/p>\n

\u201cBlonde\u201d got a rapturous reception at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, but reactions from film critics have been divided. Some love Dominik’s treatment. Others have wondered if it is exploitative. The New Yorker even called it, \u201cA grave disservice to the woman it purports to honor.\u201d It is not dissimilar to the responses to Oates’ novel in 2000. Or even the discussion around the much-tamer \u201c My Week With Marilyn,\u201d which got Michelle Williams an Oscar nomination for her performance. But they all invite questions about our own relationship with Monroe, what we owe her and what we still demand from her.<\/p>\n

Dominik, for his part, has read many of the reviews. In some ways, he said, both the positive and negative reactions are indicative of its success. Like it or not, \u201cBlonde,\u201d which arrives on Netflix on Sept. 28, does not want you to feel good about what happened to Monroe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe film’s a horror movie,\u201d Dominik said earlier this week. \u201cIt’s supposed to be an absolute onslaught. It’s a howl of pain. It’s expression of rage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBlonde\u201d takes viewers on a surreal journey through the short life of Norma Jeane Baker, from her childhood with a single mother living with schizophrenia (Julianne Nicholson), to her superficial successes in Hollywood, as Marilyn Monroe. It looks at her marriages to baseball star Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) and playwright Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody), her addiction, her mistreatment and assaults, her abortions, her miscarriage and her death, at 36, of a barbiturate overdose. <\/p>\n

There are stunning recreations of iconic movie moments, from \u201cGentleman Prefer Blondes\u201d and \u201cThe Seven Year Itch,\u201d and classic photos brought to life, but all are done with a twist. A glamorous red carpet turns into a lurid phantasmagoria of gaping, gawking jaws. The subway grate moment is a prelude to domestic abuse. Even a seemingly sweet photo of her and DiMaggio takes on a new meaning.<\/p>\n

To Dominik, his film is the opposite of exploitation. <\/p>\n

Exploitation is happily performing a song like \u201cDiamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend\u201d with a \u201cwink and a nod,\u201d he said. But, he shrugged, \u201cPeople like to be offended.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe primary relationship in the movie is between the viewer and her,\u201d Dominik said. \u201cI’ve never made a movie that tells me more about the viewer than this one.\u201d <\/p>\n

What it is not, he said, is a commentary on Roe v. Wade, or about something as reductive as \u201cdaddy\u201d issues, though Norma Jeane calls both of her husbands that. It’s about an unwanted child and a woman going through the industrial filmmaking process. And the real test for Dominik will come when the global Netflix audience gets to watch it. <\/p>\n

It’s a moment a lot of people have been waiting for, but perhaps no one more so than de Armas, who finished work on \u201cBlonde\u201d back in 2019. Her raw and vulnerable performance has been widely praised, even in the more negative reviews.<\/p>\n

It was a demanding nine-week shoot after a year of preparation, during which she was also working on other films. Her first day on set was in the actual apartment Norma Jeane lived in with her mother \u2014 a nightmare sequence in which she rescues a baby from the dresser drawer that she was kept in as an infant, as the place burns around her. Her second day on the set was her visit to her mother in the mental hospital, where she got to speak as Marilyn for the first time on camera. It was quite a way to break the ice, she said. <\/p>\n

Though she’s not an actor who stays in character when the day is over, living with the emotions, the character, and filming in the places Marilyn lived, ate, worked and even died, it was \u201cimpossible not to feel heavy and sad,\u201d she said. Even so, she counts \u201cBlonde\u201d as one of the best times she’s ever had on a set.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do trust what we did,\u201d de Armas said. \u201cI love this movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone around her was stunned by the performance as well. Brody said he left the set his first day feeling like he’d actually worked with Monroe. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe’s so iconic and it’s such a tall order for someone to interpret,\u201d Brody said. \u201cWhat she gave to be so vulnerable and so brave? It’s not something to be taken lightly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The paradox of Monroe is that no seems capable of honoring her in exactly the right way \u2014at least according to everyone else. To worship her beauty and glamor is to deny her person. To take joy in her comedic skills is to ignore her depths and desire to be a serious actor. To ignore her trauma is na\u00efve, but leaning into it is unpleasant. Though most people seem to agree that it was creepy for Hugh Hefner to boast about buying the crypt next to hers.<\/p>\n

But the madness has lived on. This spring even saw two major Marilyn moments, first with Kim Kardashian wearing her crystal-embellished nude gown to the Met Galaand then a week later when someone paid $195 million for Andy Warhol’s \u201cShot Sage Blue Marilyn, \u201d making it the most expensive work by a US artist ever sold at auction. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe’s a kind of rescue fantasy for a lot of people,\u201d Dominik said. \u201cYou see that in some of the negative reactions to the movie. It’s like they love Ana and they kind of hate the movie for putting Ana, putting the poor character through what she goes through. But I think that is an expression of the film’s success, in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cThere’s something very challenging about her as a figure because she is a person who had everything that the media is constantly telling us is desirable. She was famous, beautiful. She had an amazing job. She dated the so-called dudes of her generation. And she killed herself. And so what is everybody running towards? Why are they all running towards that? It challenges our ideas of what constitutes a good life, of the American dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com\/ldbahr<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n