‘Blonde’ Is An Ambitious Misfire From Andrew Dominik

I was raised a child in the 80s. This means I grew up in simpler times. Free of the world of cell phones, high speed internet, Amazon next day shipping, Twitter, and streaming services. I’m sure some will read that and think ‘man, that must have been difficult.’ But it was easier. Things didn’t move so fast. We weren’t connected to the matrix 24/7. We thought for ourselves. Growing up in the 80s meant I was raised on movies from my parent’s childhood. Films like Ben-Hur, The Sound of Music, The Ten Commandments, and Bambi.

These films often acted like a surrogate parent, teaching lifelong lessons. In Bambi, for instance, we learned one of the most important disciplines ever. It was something my mother would repeat to me and my siblings over and over throughout the years. A staple of wisdom for the Johnson household. In the 1942 Disney flick, one of the character’s mother reminds him what his father told him earlier that morning: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”

Which brings us to Andrew Dominik’s ambitious and controversial two-hour and 46-minute Marilyn Monroe fabricated biopic, Blonde.

It’s hard to talk about a film you completely failed to connect with – one that languishes lazily into a nightmare of suffering and lowness. I must admit, presenting a fictionalized account about one of the most iconic humans of the 20th century must have been a daunting task. Die-hard fans of the subject will certainly bemoan the hyperbole and misrepresentation depicted, while folks less aware of the real-life figure will struggle to separate fact from fiction. We’ve seen this play out in other contemporary films like Jackie and Spencer. Both films, like Blonde, have their critics. However, what director Pablo Larraín got right in both films is exactly what I feel Andrew Dominik got wrong in his. Both Jackie and Spencer – which depict fictionalized accounts of Jacqueline Kennedy and Diana Spencer, respectively – are snapshots into a moment in their subject’s life. For Jackie, it is the day of and the days following the assassination of JFK. For Diana, it is the holiday week before she ended her marriage to Prince Charles. Because these events were well publicized, it becomes easier to digest what is fiction from fact. It allows the audience to embrace the story for what it is. In Blonde, we are instead given a nearly three-hour tour of the troubled actress’ life – from her tortured youth, to her daddy issues (which Dominik beats into us relentlessly), to her untimely death. This ends up feeling overwhelming and, frankly, perplexing throughout.

Dominik’s film moves from moment to moment incoherently. The structure of the film is uneven and sloppy in both narrative and approach. This might have been Dominik’s way of paralleling his film to Marilyn’s tumultuous life, but it doesn’t work for me in the slightest. Ana de Armas is miscast in the role, despite working through the dreadful script to deliver an otherwise strong performance. She is tiny, while Monroe was known for being a dramatically curvaceous woman. If you are going to show the actress naked for half the film, I would have cast someone who pulls off the complete resemblance and not just a similar face. It could also be noted that de Armas, who is Cuban, might have been better cast as Fidel Castro while James Franco played Monroe. Just kidding… sort of.

In the same way that many of the scenes are shot, Blonde is completely out of focus. As a big fan of Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Blonde is a disappointing misfire. While I tend to look for the good in each film – so much hard work goes into any production – it would be impossible to both write a review and heed the advice learned from Bambi.