Blonde (2022)
Cinema is not History.
But Cinema teaches us new constellations of emotion by breaking History, Fantasy, and Tragedy into fragmented reflections that diffuse and disperse to be assimilated behind our eyes and past our ears.
One person will see a masterpiece, and another will see a torture chamber.
Andrew Dominik’s film Blonde (Netflix) is many things, but it is not a documentary in the same sense that Oliver Stone’s masterpiece JFK (1991) is not.
Both of these films are much, much more.
Like JFK, Blonde bends the boundaries of what film can convey as an artistic medium for telling stories with sight and sound. And it was made for an audience that has consistently consumed pornography online for two decades.
Classic camera setups, editing techniques, and modern cuts, angles, and transitions haunt the viewer relentlessly together. The film assaults us from every angle. The movie is beautiful, but the subject matter is very dark.
Blonde is a journey of trauma. Unfortunately, the film does not convey Marilyn Monroe's holistic life experience. Nor is it a testament to the great art she produced in her brief lifetime.
You will pass through a journey of deep pain rooted in men without moral centers—vampires who hunted her the whole of her life.
Rape. Drugs. Multiple forced abortions and a terrible miscarriage. The worst conveyance of a Presidential blowjob in History (seriously, that scene is emotionally scarring, but it’s just one of the hundreds in this movie).
There is a point at which Norma Jean is given drugs to evoke Marilyn for the stage. She is crying and saying, “She left me.” The man is coaxing Marilyn, not realizing she may be speaking to her miscarried and lost babies.
This film deals with forced abortion during a time when Americans find themselves losing control over their bodies and what they choose to put in or take out of them.
Norma Jean Baker never had control of her body or her life. Men took from her, and women abandoned her. She died with no friend by her side. She had a tragically short and what I believe was a painful life. This film captures the worst aspects of her life and dares to project them as art on screen.
Perhaps the viewer, annoyed with the recent Elvis film starring Austin Butler, where the drugs and madness of celebrity were largely absent, will appreciate the opposite extreme, where it’s all madness, drugs, and trauma.
The film Blonde is not for everyone, but it was made for someone, and human beings will be screening this movie decades from now as a classic tragedy.
There is only one way to watch a film about a dead icon. Like it was happening to you, and monitoring how it makes you feel.
