When we recorded this week’s Gossip with Celebitchy podcast, I had only watched half of Blonde, and I talked on the pod about how the movie wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. At that point, I had watched up until Marilyn Monroe met Arthur Miller. The film truly takes horrendous turn after horrendous turn after that. I mean, it was trashy before the Arthur Miller stuff, but you could still feel the thread of Joyce Carol Oates’s book in the first half, even though director/screenwriter Andrew Dominik made a choice to edit out some of the better and more explanatory parts of Oates’s book. Like, Marilyn’s whole first marriage. That’s when Marilyn first begins to understand that it might be difficult for her to get pregnant and carry to term (she had severe endometriosis and very painful periods). Instead of using the truth, Dominik made the choice of forcing his MM character to repeatedly get pregnant and then be forced into having abortions. It was truly insane and there’s no historical record of any of that. The abortion scenes – especially the second one – were beyond f–ked up. So was the talking baby scene, where Marilyn and Arthur Miller are expecting and the fetus lays a guilt trip on her for having an abortion years earlier. Well, Blonde is so bad and so damaging to abortion rights that Planned Parenthood has now issued a statement:
Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, the Marilyn Monroe biopic starring Ana de Armas as the screen legend, has been sparking strong reactions since it premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 8 and made its Netflix debut Sept. 28. Film critics have called the movie, which is based on Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 novel of the same title, cruel and exploitative for its portrayal of Monroe’s life.
One thread of that criticism has been the way Blonde deals with abortion. The film depicts Monroe as having had two illegal abortions, which were imposed upon her against her will and which tormented her. Via photoreal CGI, the film portrays Monroe’s fetuses speaking to her. “You won’t hurt me this time, will you?” a fetus asks Monroe.
Arriving three months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Blonde comes as many in the entertainment industry have been considering their own roles in the way abortion is understood by the public. As far as abortion rights activists are concerned, Blonde is a step in the wrong direction.
“As film and TV shapes many people’s understanding of sexual and reproductive health, it’s critical these depictions accurately portray women’s real decisions and experiences,” Caren Spruch, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s national director of arts and entertainment engagement, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “While abortion is safe, essential health care, anti-abortion zealots have long contributed to abortion stigma by using medically inaccurate descriptions of fetuses and pregnancy. Andrew Dominik’s new film, Blonde, bolsters their message with a CGI-talking fetus, depicted to look like a fully formed baby.”
Spruch went on to say, “Planned Parenthood respects artistic license and freedom. However, false images only serve to reinforce misinformation and perpetuate stigma around sexual and reproductive health care. Every pregnancy outcome — especially abortion — should be portrayed sensitively, authentically and accurately in the media. We still have much work to do to ensure that everyone who has an abortion can see themselves onscreen. It is a shame that the creators of Blonde chose to contribute to anti-abortion propaganda and stigmatize people’s health care decisions instead.”
Yep, all of this, especially “It is a shame that the creators of Blonde chose to contribute to anti-abortion propaganda and stigmatize people’s health care decisions instead.” The second abortion isn’t even portrayed as Marilyn’s decision. Men literally come for her in the night and take her away for a bloody abortion. AND NONE OF IT IS TRUE. It would be one thing if this was a biographical film which stuck to historical accuracy and it was a fact that, say, Marilyn had an abortion and regretted it. There is literally no evidence that any of the abortion sh-t happened. She did miscarry when she was with Arthur Miller and that miscarriage left her devastated and contributed to her drug use. That’s the historical reality – that Marilyn desperately wanted a child and she could never carry a pregnancy to term. And Blonde is 100% anti-abortion propaganda.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Netflix.
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- Brad Pitt and Ana de Armas during Blonde red carpet. 79th Venice International Film Festival, Italy – 08 Sep 2022,Image: 720697793, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Maria Laura Antonelli / AGF Foto / Avalon
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- Los Angeles Premiere Of Featuring: Andrew Dominik and Ana de Armas Where: Paris, France, France When: 13 Sep 2022 Credit: Xavier Collin/ABACA/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images **North America Rights Only**
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- 70th San Sebastian International Film Festival: ‘Blonde’ – Photocall Featuring: Ana de Armas, Andrew Dominik Where: Donostia / San Sebastian, Spain When: 24 Sep 2022 Credit: Sean Thornton/Cover Images **NOT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLICATION IN SPAIN**
Well if I had any doubt about seeing it I’ve got none now. Hard pass.
^ this!
I watched it over the weekend. That’s 2 hours and 45 minutes I’m not getting back. Ana de Armas was surprisingly good, but the film is artsy, pretentious, misogynist crap. That’s not even getting into the multiple times Marilyn is imagining a fetus as a fully grown baby. Sometimes she’s forced to have an abortion. Other times she has miscarriages. But the imagery is consistently horrifying. I stayed up late reading all the hate reviews of film to process the trauma of having watched it. I do recommend the reviews.
So Ana is good in a trash movie? Lol,ok… Ana is either acting like a childlike and dumb caricature of Marylin or she overacts with her non-stop crying.
Yeah all those things are true. It’s a terrible script but in the few moments where Norma Jeane was just herself I believed Ana in the role. And when there were brief clips of Marilyn in character in some of her famous scenes Ana pulled it off. She’d be okay in this part with a decent script but I never want to see another film about Marilyn. Let her rest.
I agree that Ana was good in the beginning but her performance became increasingly bad largely bc asking a woman to play wounded baby for three hours is actually really horrible directing. I love Adrien Brody but I was laughing so much during his parts. When he starts weeping because Magda was illiterate and when he calls Marilyn “My Magda”. Also there’s this part where she calls him Daddy and tells him “I am the vessel, the baby decides everything” and he looks at her like she’s insane which is possibly the only real reaction in the whole movie. SMH
I don’t know if it was her performance, the script, the direction or a mix of all three but she didn’t do it for me in this. She was very one note.
Ada seems to spend the film in hollow tears .She seems to be trying to portray Monroe while battling with her cuban accent.Even Adrien is laughable to me…
Same. Will not be going to see this.
Seconded.
Same. That’s so weird, especially if they don’t even know if it ever actually happened.
The more that is made about Marilyn’s life, the angrier I get. She never wanted her belongings picked apart by vulture-like collectors, and those she entrusted did just that. Her intelligence, warmth, charisma, and resiliency are RARELY brought up in conversations about her. I worked in child and youth mental health for years, and kids who had chaotic starts and were bounced around in the foster system like she was, are still largely having a hard time being given the chance to be seen as anything other that what people project onto them. That Dominik said in an interview that he literally gives zero shits about Marilyn as a person, as a role model, as an actor who brought fabulous characters to life for generations….. She’s an object to him, so she’s an object in this film. I didn’t even know about the fake abortion coercion!! Fuck this guy, fuck this movie. Sorry, Ana, you were the best part of The Grey Man, and Knives Out is awesome. I’ll catch you in your next project. *flips an end table, storms off to try and enjoy a beautiful fall day with family*
The film got me wondering whether the non stop exploitation of her life is possible because she has no family to object to it. Another absolutely heart breaking detail. Can we all be her family just a little bit to loudly object to the endless exploitation of a fellow woman who can no longer speak on her own behalf?
I think this i something that truly needs to be done.
YES!!! Here, here. Her fans do not want this. Grody exploiters who refuse to see her as a whole, complex, wonderful person need to be stopped!
❤️
As much as I would like to agree with this, knowing what the
the movie was about didn’t stop you or others from watching it.
Pam Anderson protested against the movie Pam and Tommy and said this movie made her relive her trauma over again for the entertainment of others.
@Coco – I hear you, but we can also learn from mistakes. I didn’t watch it to see her exploited or because of the endless gratuitous nudity. I hadn’t read the reviews and had some notion that Joyce Carol Oates had written a respectful, if fictionalized biography. Watching it made me angry that this film had been made to begin with, that more hadn’t been done to stop it, that seemingly no one with her best interests in mind has a say in how her image is used. I should have turned it off and threatened to several times, but weirdly even watching it I didn’t believe that a disgusting misogynist film would still be made in this era. I figured a turning point was coming and it didn’t. That’s why as I said elsewhere I spent the rest of the evening consuming all the reviews I hadn’t read. I wanted to know that something was being said by those with a platform to say it.
It is brutal.
It IS brutal, I agree. Made it thru about an hour and turned it off. Ugh, what a horrible hour it was. Baffles me that it isn’t even true. Why, then??
I only made it about 15 minutes. I have watched movies that left me weeping for hours afterward (Million Dollar Baby) but this one I didn’t have the stamina for whatever reason to finish.
Everyone involved this movie from Dominik to Pitt to De Armas is spitting on Monroe’s grave.. They all deserve the bad reviews and people hating on the movie. And I hope Marilyn haunts their asses and careers.
I’m still speechless that ADA can say that she feels like Monroe is happy with the movie and Dominik made a feminist movie. Hollywood stars really have no shame.
I’m just happy than none of them are getting any awards for this.
ADA and her director said the most outlandish things during this press tour. I also didn’t understand the Oscar talk about her performance:she’s just always in the verge of tears and topless for 3 hours. There’s literally no nuance and it’s insulting.
Her saying that she has some kind of special connection to Marilyn and her blessing is just disrespectful and shameless. She made birthday posts for her and even put a photo of Monroe on her nightstand in her Golden Globes behind the scenes photo shoot while she was filming this humiliation of Monroe’s memory.
I tried watching this last Thursday and couldn’t finish it. In addition to propagating lies and dragging a dead woman’s reputation through the mud, this film is just painfully boring.
Hard agree. I rarely turn off a movie and I’ve never left a theater movie but this was boring AF. I found Ana pretty good as Marilyn (despite some moments when her accent slipped up), but I also didn’t understand the thropple relationship? It just wasn’t a good movie.
The lies / fiction drive me crazy. There are so many people that will assume this is a biography. They will assume that the made up elements are “artsy” aspects like the talking fetus, but will not understand the abortions themselves are also fiction. If they really had compassion for this woman then they didn’t need to embellish on the abuse she experienced in her life. And if they don’t have compassion for her then they should never have made a movie about her in the first place.
Last thought: I think the movie looks visually very interesting. I love the art of recreating the makeup and fashion of a well known person. But the content sounds so upsetting I will never watch it.
Watched it yesterday and i still feel dirty. The take on abortion was so terrible and tacky, the camera being inside her vag twice, the talking cgi baby- straight out of the anti choice flyer. And the kennedy stuff, i guess Dominik thinks hes really leaning into her perspective but it ends up being cringy torture porn. This is not on Ana de Armas, i blame the filmmaker.
But how wasn’t it also on Ana? She said repeatedly that Marylin’s ghost visited them on set and gave her her blessing, that they visited Marylin’s grave… If you listen to Ana,she clearly believes that Marylin was ok with this movie so why ppl are trying to distance her from this distasteful movie? Ana is a big girl who read the script and choose to do this crap.Did you listen to Ana during this press tour? She was saying the most crazy things. I don’t understand why you(and others) want to victimize ADA in the same way as MM. She’s just as guilty as the producers of the movie so you don’t have to victimize her. The only victim here is MM
What?!?! Marilyn’s GHOST gave her implicit (or explicit) approval? Wow. Ok.
*flips the coffee table. Amends prior opinion to state that Chris Evans was best part of The Grey Man.*
@Laura-Lee MacDonald, these are some Ana’s quotes during this press tour:
‘Once I was in costume….Everyone in the room started crying; I can tell you that. It was very emotional. It became real… you know?’ said the star.
‘It’s about the things we haven’t seen, the moments when the cameras aren’t flashing or rolling, when Marilyn is not ‘on’,’ said the Cuban-born beauty.
‘It’s fiction. We don’t have proof this happened. But it fills the gaps in the things we already know with a version of events that we should at least consider.’
In a press conference on Thursday at the Venice Film Festival, Ana told reporters that she felt Marilyn’s presence during filming of the fictionalized account of her life, insisting her spirit would let them know if she was happy or unhappy with the way things were going, according to Reuters.
Ana de Armas, star of the Marilyn Monroe biopic ‘Blonde’, says she feels the film does something “revolutionary and important”.
Ana read the script, said yes to this shit and literally acted out sick men’s fantasies of what women are,helping reinforcing them. Ana wants to be famous and , it was, actually a really shrewd move because people have not stopped talking about her as Marilyn. Whether the film is good or bad is beside the point of: she got a lot of attention and raised her Hollywood profile
Which is in keeping with her paparazzi-laden relationship with Ben Affleck. She seems to be quite Machiavellian in her attempts to raise her profile.
This is also on Ana. She’s not innocent here. She took the role to win an Oscar. She willingly portrayed MM this way, she’s just as guilty as Dominik. She might doesn’t hate MM like the director, but she also doesn’t give a shit about her.
Ana said she found Andrew Dominik’s approach to ´Blonde ´ to be the most daring,unapologetic, and feminist take on Marylin Monroe’s story that I had ever seen…LOL. I guess Ana is a poor victim :Andrew Dominyk’s victim, Adrian Lyn’s victim and Ben Affleck’s victim.
This! I like Ana but she shouldn’t have taken this role and it makes me think less of her because I know she’s not hurting to get roles. She could have passed on this and after reading all your comments, I won’t be watching.
The whole thing was a misogynistic mess.
I’d say it’s anti-Marilyn propaganda, but yeah, all this, too.
Blonde is awful in so many, many ways, but the abortion elements — being so false and misogynistic — were especially horrible. So was the Kennedy bit. So was the end. 😫 I’m very glad it’s getting trashed and that PP has issued this statement.
Having watched CNN’s docuseries, Reframed, earlier this year (before they went hard over to the dark side and #BoycottCNN), I watched Blonde in disgusted amazement. Where is any of the real Monroe??!! I don’t know why I kept thinking there would be some bit of authenticity, and kept watching to the end. Mistake. I was depressed and felt like I needed a shower and my eyes and brain bleached after watching it.
For anyone still processing the trauma of having watched it, I cannot recommend enough curling up with a steaming mug and reading all the reviews. It’s absolutely cathartic to know that thoughtful, informed, professional film reviewers hate this film like they’ve never hated a film before.
I cackled when I saw the scores on Rotten Tomatoes. It is what they deserve
The NYT hilariously nailed it when they referred to the director as *checks to confirm I’m getting the quote correct* “a man.”
This is a brilliant idea! I’ll substitute a martini for the steaming mug, but I will do that very thing when the sun’s over the yardarm. Meanwhile, I’m watching Hallmark movies.
@Bettyrose. Thanks for the tip, will try that.
I was a bit upset when I finished watching it and wasn’t sure how to wash away the lingering stank of such a bad film. So glad others felt in a similar way.
I watched it yesterday in chunks as it’s very long. I think Ana was good in it, but everything else was awful. The weird talking baby CGI stuff was like whaaaa? And the scene with Kennedy was just gross. Awful.
I am appalled by what’s described in the post and comments. How abhorrent
Same. Talking fetus? In the wake of Dobbs? Anytime really but, seriously, now when women are painfully suffering and dying from lack of abortion care? The fuck. ADA doesn’t get a pass here.
I know! It’s beyond distasteful. I saw that clip on Twitter—it’s a freaking baby, not a fetus. True anti-abortion nonsense.
No person who performed in this movie should get a pass. I’m so disappointed in Bobby Canavale.
I don’t even know what to say. My feelings are all over the place. ADA’s acting is fine. She overdoes the stupid schtick a bit, but I enjoy her portraying MM’s acting chops as far superior than her critic’s opinions of her acting. We all know she wasn’t a dumb blonde thus the title. BUT, the movie continues to push the dumb blonde narrative. So it really doesn’t know what it thinks either.
The abortion mess…. It’s like the movie falls to the dumb blonde side in that she can’t possibly know what she’s talking about, and that she’s inherently crazy like her mother. Yes, anytime women have feelings and opinions, we’ve run off the rails or are having a bad period, so all those lines of thinking are solidified in wherever we’ve come and how much yet we have to go.
The entire thing left me empty. And confused. I love artistic expression in all its glory. And something which leaves me in deep thought I’d normally think has cause for celebration, but there’s nothing to celebrate here, it feels like. I find myself wondering why the frak ADA agreed to do this.
I hadn’t read up on the director or his intentions. I did immediately read reviews because I was kind of numb. And I was a bit shocked at the numbers only because I wasn’t sure where exactly on the scale I’d rate it.
Since when have I seen an interesting series of film with content which makes me want to see but turn away and cringe? I don’t know. And what does it say about me that I watched the entire thing, but couldn’t make the entire first episode of Dahmer? I don’t know. I’m still thinking about it lol.
For anyone still considering seeing this garbage, here’s another reason not to watch. Andrew Dominik’s disgusting opinion of Marilyn, in his own words:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-09-27/marilyn-monroe-blonde-director-andrew-dominik?_amp=true
“Blonde’ is supposed to leave you shaking,” Dominik said. “Like an orphaned rhesus monkey in the snow. It’s a howl of pain or rage.”
Ahhh. Yup.
Dear gawd. In case anyone wants to be spared a click, this sums it up:
“OK, she wrested control away from the men at the studio, because, you know, women are just as powerful as men. But that’s really looking at it through a lens that’s not so interesting to me.” 🤢🤢🤢
He’s somethin’ else.
This guy is vile. I’m surprised he ever gets any women to agree to work with him. Marilyn didn’t deserve this.
Dick-Dominick is lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut. That interview made me GASP OUT LOUD!!! That, alone, should have disqualified him from making that “film.”
Brad Pitt needs to go AWAY, for producing this swill.
Omg why? Why give it the stream? If you hate it and watch the whole thing it counts just as much as someone loving it.
This is basic capitalism. Maybe people don’t understand how streaming metrics are analyzed? Come on, just turn it off or they’ll make more 🤦♀️
I’m not counting people who watch things for review purposes.
This so much this stop helping with the exploitation of women, first Pam Anderson and now Marilyn.
I pledge to do better.
The movie is disgusting, misogynistic, disjointed trash. And I totally agree with Sophie’s comment, Ana’s “performance” was just overacting or grotesque imitation, I did not believe she was MM for one second, I don’t know what people think good acting is, but it ain’t this. Hair and make up plus costume were good, but that is not her doing.
I guess we are the only ones who think that Ana’s performance was mediocre🤷♀️
You’re in the minority ,yep.
Proud to be in the « minority » and not be impressed by her « performance » if it either being on the verge of tears or being half naked…Ana has been in 3 flops released this year :that’s got to be some kind of record … but it’s probably not her fault.
Marilyn Monroe had an intelligence behind her eyes that shined through, which is a huge part of what made her so compelling. I’ll just say that ADA does not have that same depth shining through and will leave it at that.
Absolutely not going to watch any film that plays into the pathetic mythology of the anti abortion movement. No thanks
I watched the movie. It’s really bad. All of it except Ana. She really plays her so well and you feel her pain…she deserved a better movie.
At that time, women were really nothing but objects. Generally speaking. Yes, there were decent people living ignorant lives while others suffered. But we’re talking Hollywood. Men were obscene. They’re obscene now. There weren’t any obstacles back then however. If that’s the deal, why the all the abortion shit?
The movie was horrible and basically gets off on a woman’s pain. It was so obviously made by men and the abortion scenes with the CGI fully formed baby when she has only weeks pregnant was just gross. Glad others hated it too and Planned Parenthood took a stance.
Ana De Armas was pretty brilliant in her acting, she even looked so much like Marilyn. I do wonder why any actress would do a BS, exploitative movie like this…
After reading all of the negative reviews I don’t want to see it but I was curious about all the people saying how misogynistic it is and wanted to see if there were any females within the creative team. Besides it being based on a Joyce Carol Oates book (that I’ve heard he veers very far from) there are only 2 women producers of 5, no women writers and no women editors. So a movie made about a women that is trying to really get into her psyche is made almost entirely by men. Sounds about right.
I watched it, actually fell asleep after two hours as it was late, but watched the rest the next day just to see it through to the end. I saw one reviewer described this film as a horror film, and I kinda agree. It’s not a biopic of Marilyn. It uses her name and image for something else completely. It’s was entirely for the male gaze. They completely stripped Marilyn down to some dumb blonde who always spoke in a creepy baby voice. She was so much more than that and hated her ‘dumb blonde’ persona, but all this film did was reinforce that.
Marilyn endured so much sexism, objectification and exploitation in her life, so a film about her showing that is plausible. Yet all this does is exploit her even further and by making her a passive and yet consenting to such treatment.
+1000 Marilyn (Norma Jeane) Monroe was not dumb. She was misled and abused by people that saw her innocence. Her biggest fault (at/in her time was that she believed people within her business were good) was believing that the industry had her back. She trusted people that did nothing to earn her trust.
I will say that Some Like it Hot is one of my favorite Marilyn movies. (Hotel del Coronado is a bit old & crusty but an amazing feel to it).imo The beach is beautiful.
Tony Curtis spoke/wrote about the miscarriage stories years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/aug/07/tony-curtis-marilyn-monroe-baby
I appreciate PP people speaking out/against this movie. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Director clearly needs more direction in his life.
Thank you for sharing this. I will not watch.
Do not put a man in charge of telling a woman’s story.
Oates fictionalized book of Marilyn was garbage to begin with. Add the fact that Dominik spent a decade getting this off the ground shows he and Oates character. They hated Marilyn.
The movie is #1 on Netflix, so all this controversy is helping its success. Maybe that was the plan all along? 🤷♀️
Can we also talk about how this portrayal of Marilyn had her constantly calling husbands “daddy”?!? Even as she was slapped by DiMaggio when he saw her nude photos? Gross! There is no record of her saying this, and only a man would want her to! Fukcing disgusting.
Only a sad man could have the audacity to call this a feminist film.
The calling them all daddy thing made me sick. I HATED it. You are correct…only a pathetic man would call this a feminist film.
To be honest, Marilyn was prone to calling her husbands “Daddy.” I read that in Anthony Summers book, and he did his research.
But I’m sure she did it with nuance.
The film exaggerates it, grossly.
Ana De Armas has BEEN shady in my opinion. I’m not really surprised she would help exploit a dead woman like this. I like ambitious people but her ambition is a bit…greasy.
Ana has been pretty open about wanting to be famous. She’s never taken a principled stance on anything that doesn’t directly benefit her. She’s getting exactly what she wanted.
Agreed.
I saw it last night and admit that there were parts that made me tear up. I disliked JCO’s book when I first read it decades ago—could only get through half…it a thick-ass tome of fiction!—because I felt like MM’s life was so well-known and facts, so easy to verify that there was no point in creating straight up fictional subplots.
With the movie, I was very cautious going into it based on all the backlash. I have to say, I do think they treated her with more grace then I expected, although I was quite literally expecting a Godfather-like portrayal of domestic violence and soft porn exploitation scenes.
It was tamer, but was it any good? I enjoyed Ana’s likeness and the evocation of familiar still images and famous musical numbers. I don’t doubt that the real MM went through so much trauma that it turned her to drugs. However, the portrayal was one-dimensional; ADA’s MM was always uncertain and wavering, allowing things to happen to her and being a victim of her circumstances. Constant victimization doesn’t catapult you to the heights of fame and there was no show of the raw ambition that MM must’ve possessed. She never seemed to own her sexuality the way MM also did…and yes we know it was a double-edged sword, but MM knew how to wield it. Ultimately, there needed to be more balance to show the sassy, witty Marilyn who could charm the world doing more than just blowing kisses and saying, “I love you” to the crowd.
As for the baby/abortion scenes, I bet you there were times when MM was relieved for the procedure and times when she was legitimately upset over having to do it. It is known that she liked children and always wanted her own and there is a way to portray that. Every pregnancy comes with nuance and what they depicted was not it.
I wanted to add that my favorite texts of Marilyn comes from Truman Capote’s short stories. His ability to transcribe conversations verbatim is unrivaled and she just jumps off the page as a funny but irritable person who could playfully turn on and off the MM persona button. How I wish they had used anything but Blonde as a source! I actually enjoyed “My Week with Marilyn” with Michelle Williams but just couldn’t get over the lack of resemblance.
Planned parenthood is correct. Ana has a resemblance and clothing, hair and makeup help considerably. Her acting was a weepy mess. The director hates women. In spite of the subject matter and salaciousness I found it a crashing bore.
I don’t get why the director made this movie when he seems to dislike Marilyn Monroe and has no respect for her as an actress. Look she wasn’t perfect but she overcame a lot to get where she was. It’s just further exploitation of someone who is not here to tell their own story, it’s deplorable.
This movie was even worse than the script made it out to be. Exploitative, misogynistic, trauma porn trying to pass off as a movie when it’s just awful. And on top of that, it was BORING. There wasn’t an actual plot, it was only scene after scene of Marilyn suffering. And what makes it even worse is that it’s based on a FICTIONAL novel. The author and script writer/director chose to keep and show these falsehoods in there and call it “art” which is disgusting. Just truly heinous all around.
Confused by the Ana praise in some reviews, she was better in Knives Out. All she pretty much did was cry, be on the verge of tears and have the same wide eyed look the entire movie. She’s not getting nominated for an Oscar, not with the competition this year and the fact that this is a highly controversial movie that most AMPAS members will probably turn off within the first hour. Angelica Jade Bastién at Vulture wrote a phenomenal article about this terrible movie.
I don’t understand how Hollyweird gave her a standing ovation of 14 minutes for this garbage!
It wasn’t Hollywood and all the movies were promised standing ovations at the Venice Film Festival. It was like a peeing contest between the different PR teams to see who could report the longest standing ovations to the Media.
At the end of the day, Blonde wasn’t good enough to be in any of the runnings for the awards at the Venice Film Festival.
I watched & fast forwarded through this brutal terrible movie last weekend. I cannot remember the last time a movie bothered me so much. It was just nothing but abuse after abuse hurled on Marilyn’s character. I get this was a fictional account (don’t know why they bother doing that when her real story would have been more interesting) but it was ridiculous. The throuple arrangement, the abortions, the JFK scene (ridiculous). It was such a travesty of a movie.
It was clear the director and script writer had a misogynistic agenda.
I don’t understand why this movie was made. I tried to be fair (the film was based on a fictive novel), but there is really no excuse. Marilyn was a tortured soul, but she was also a GOOD soul. That part got erased, was left unexamined.
Ana was fine (very good, mostly), but she is so un-Marilyn-like in some scenes, especially the one in which she is outdoors w/ Arthur Miller (Brody) wearing a sundress and holding a flower: I almost laughed.
This movie served no real purpose, and shooting those final scenes in Marilyn’s actual house in Brentwood is disturbing.
Charges should be filed.
I read the book years ago; it was depressing but a good read. And, you knew it was fiction and I took it as that. The movie is unwatchable! I made it through 45 minutes. The bizarre threesome relationship with those horrible men ending in a pregnancy ended it for me. Sad for Marilyn that this is the best we can do for her.