At the end of the day, Andrew Dominik’s Blonde was a terrible movie. It just kept getting worse and worse too, like the first half of the movie isn’t good per se, but it vaguely resembled the actual life of Marilyn Monroe. The second half goes off a cliff, it’s just a purely misogynistic fantasy. While the source material – Joyce Carol Oates’ book of the same name – was pretty dark and sexist towards Marilyn, it wasn’t AS dark as Dominik’s fantasies. Anyway, no one should be proud of any of it. Dominik was recently asked about the American reception to the film while he was in Saudi Arabia and his reaction was… not good.
Blonde director Andrew Dominik is reveling in the backlash over his film’s depiction of late screen legend Marilyn Monroe. The Australian filmmaker, 55, said he was “really pleased” that the fictional take on her life “outraged so many people” after premiering on Netflix in September, as he appeared Sunday at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
He blamed the response on U.S. audiences, stating: “They hated the movie!”
“Now we’re living in a time where it’s important to present women as empowered, and they want to reinvent Marilyn Monroe as an empowered woman. That’s what they want to see. And if you’re not showing them that, it upsets them,” Dominik explained.
“Which is kind of strange, because she’s dead. The movie doesn’t make any difference in one way or another,” he continued. “What they really mean is that the film exploited their memory of her, their image of her, which is fair enough. But that’s the whole idea of the movie. It’s trying to take the iconography of her life and put it into service of something else, it’s trying to take things that you’re familiar with, and turning the meaning inside out. But that’s what they don’t want to see.”
If Blonde had been presented as some kind of horror-story reimagining of Marilyn’s life, I think people would have gone into it understanding that “this is a fictional reimagining.” But it was promoted as a biographical film and Ana de Armas wouldn’t shut up about how it respected Marilyn’s life and work when it wasn’t like that at all. I’m sure Marilyn went through some terrible times, obviously, and the fact that she couldn’t carry a pregnancy to term was one of the greatest sadnesses of her life. But the dramatization of that alone in Blonde was offensive and misogynistic. This was about Dominik’s need to exploit and brutalize a famous woman on-screen.
Photos courtesy of Netflix, Cover Images, Avalon Red.
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- Brad Pitt and Ana de Armas during Blonde red carpet. 79th Venice International Film Festival, Italy – 08 Sep 2022,Image: 720697797, 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**
This douche bag is a hateful misogynist who is emotionally unstable. So gross. He’s such a loser.
Well, there you have it. This guy is just a misogynist, period. No wonder the movie was so gleefully torture p*rn.
This guy. Does he do yoga? Cuz he would suck his own dick if he could stretch far enough. What a pos.
I can actually see him trying.
I think if he wanted to make a story about how Hollywood mistreated women during this time period, he could’ve done that without using Marilyn specifically, and without making it an NC-17 film with graphic assaults.
But then, if he had made a generic movie about the film industry at that time period, how on earth could Kim Kardashian have gotten into the news again by wearing a dress made famous by Marilyn Monroe?
Also without lying about her in the movie. Which he did, copiously. Nothing in his misogynistic fantasy is worth anything. It’s all lies.
“present women as empowered”– but here’s the thing though.
Every human being is autonomous and has their dignity, no matter how many OTHER people DENY it and no matter what circumstances they are subjected to.
She WAS empowered, she HAD power, she USED it, and she accomplished many things-
…..this flipping imbecile can’t tell the difference between a human spirit and a social construct
Exactly @teehee, I hate that this man has completely overlooked all of the examples of how Marilyn used her power. There are so many stories of her being on set and thinking a scene should go a certain way but the director thought differently. And so she would keep doing it, but never quite capturing what the director wanted, to the point where the director got frustrated and let her do it the way she wanted. And her version was always the one that ended up in the film. Billy Wilder talked about it in Some Like it Hot, and Lawrence Olivier. If anything, I think contrasting that type of shrewdness with some of the powerlessness she must have felt in other areas of her life would have made a more powerful film. But he’s not capable of seeing that nuance in a woman, perhaps, and now is being “film school guy” whose work is just so genius that none of us can possibly understand it.
I’ve said it before: this dude has serious mommy issues. He should’ve just gotten some therapy instead of wasting Netflix’s money on a terrible movie.
Ugh! I’m not exactly a hardcore Marilyn Stan, but over the years, the more I read about her, the more respect and admiration I have for her. Yes, she had a ton of mental health struggles, but she was incredibly smart, business savvy, and a civil rights supporter.
Just because someone is dead, doesn’t mean one can use and abuse her image however they see fit.
Does he not even understand that part of why people were pissed was because he just…you know…made shit up? Like, there isn’t even a lot of evidence for most of the things in the film. Marilyn certainly had a tough life and was surely met with mistreatment, but the film…isn’t really it. If you are going to tell her story, why not do it with at least a degree of historical accuracy?
This guy called Gentlemen Prefer Blondes a film about “well-dressed whores” which tells me everything I need to know about his analysis of Marilyn. F*** off.
Irrespective of the misogyny, that analysis demonstrates a lack of critical thinking or appreciation for classic Hollywood. As the saying goes, grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man.
I have always loved Marilyn and was curious as the images from the movie that I had seen Anna did appear to have a good resemblance to Marilyn
I am so very glad I did not see the movie now and would not watch it ever
I loathe the fact that people can get away with saying & doing the cruellest things
Since 2016 there seems no depths that can’t be plummeted without consequences & some support as protest to this is deemed wokism or cancel culture
I am proud to be woke and long for the day that karma bites these bigots and low life’s in the bum
Marilyn was a beautiful and intelligent woman and deserves to be remembered as such
Right? It’s super irrelevant if we erase the strengths and contributions of long dead women. What difference does it make for women now that we pretend women of the past were docile idiots? Who cares if I had a great grandmother who taught school and tended to a farm while raising 9 children? Who cares if her descendants were raised knowing they came from a long line of strong women? Women’s contributions didn’t start mattering until the 1970s.
I’m just going to keep saying this. Hollywood is absolutely one of the worst American institutions when it comes to treatment of women and marginalized people in general. And it goes back to the very beginning of the film industry. The late Scotty Bowers’ accounts of how he was trafficking people, both male and female, to the biggest, most powerful stars in Hollywood during the forties and fifties was appalling. But the Hollywood media reaction was, oh, look, Scotty was making sure everyone could get dates! Horrible whitewashing of an ugly era. And some of those trafficked were only teenagers. Both male and female stars participated. Some used to be favorites of mine. We have to call this abuse out, not normalize it. I wish someone would write an accurate depiction of this and other abuses, but we still seem to be letting the abusers like this director off the hook by letting them set the narrative. Marilyn deserves better as do other people who were and are exploited in various ways.
If he’d made a good film, there wouldn’t have been backlash & he knows it.
He’s part of a long line of men who refused to see Marilyn as a human being; he’s just mad people acknowledge it this time.
Terrible movie, terrible director. Leave Marilyn alone.
I watched Blonde. Hated it.
It felt me feely guilty for watching it.
It had zero need to be made, no artistic talent, value or originality at all.
It was simply another version of rehashed rumors and gossip that used Marilyn/Norma Jean and exploited her, AGAIN.
OMG! Cheap excuse to make $$ off a dead woman. AGAIN.
MM led a sad, troubled life in which she was used, abused, and heartbroken by nearly everyone in her life.
Let her RIP.
If this quack had ANY talent he could find better subject matter. No one is buying his BS.
These remarks must be a joke, right??? Wow wow wow… Vile,just through and through vile…
He made a crappy movie and now he’s trying to blame everyone else.
The movie was terrible.
Ana is still campaigning for this movie(she is doing ‘Actors on actors with Eddie Redeymane,she was also at the Governor’s ball) and Dominyk still talking and being dismissive about Marylin is not helping her case…
What an a-hole comment to say!!!! Shame on this heartless POS!
Of course he’s crying about this, in SAUDIA ARABIA smh