Reviews

Between 2005-2016 I wrote more than 2,000 reviews for the Chicago Tribune's RedEye. Here's a good place to start.

'Blonde' plays a relevant note over and over again

Netflix

Fifteen. That’s how many times Sky Ferreira says the title of “Nobody Asked Me (If I Was Okay)” throughout the four-minute song. Writer-director Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde” contains 166 minutes of nobody really asking Marilyn Monroe if she’s OK. It’s similarly repetitive, though not without weight.

Sporting an accent whose occasional cracks seem an intentional part of the film’s non-reality, Ana de Armas stars as the artist formerly known as Norma Jeane Baker, who utilized underrated talent and a bevy of drooling men to escape a traumatic childhood and become an enormous movie star—albeit one who was sexualized at every possible moment and typecast as a dumb, well, you know. And Dominik (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”) avoids the typical biopic and many aspects of traditional storytelling. This is a woozy movie, disinterested in narrative as it prioritizes the essence of how terrible it feels to be loved by all and heard by none. That is certainly clear; what’s unclear is why capturing that feeling and telling a proper story are mutually exclusive.

For example: We see Marilyn marry Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) and Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody) and call both older men “Daddy,” an extension of a lifelong/movielong search for the father she never knew. But these relationships feel like bullet points instead of a person’s life in progress; it’s hard to know if we’re supposed to think that Marilyn/Norma accepted validation from any famous guy with a few years on her or if there was anything about these guys in particular that gave her even a misguided sense of satisfaction and/or safety. The whole movie is kind of like that, hopping around among people in her life (including Julianne Nicholson as her troubled mother and David Warshofsky as a film executive who sexually assaults Marilyn and doesn’t think twice about sitting next to her in a limo) and vaguely suggesting connections while also defiantly leaving out the actual detail and connective tissue that would feel like an honest portrait.

That doesn’t mean a traditional biopic, which with rare exception turns a fascinating person’s life into a cliche. But “Blonde” focuses so determinedly on the notion of Marilyn Monroe as a victim of every person and situation that it minimizes her agency in her own story rather than making a well-articulated point about how ill-suited this particular person was for this kind of spotlight at this time in American movies. The filmmaking is often beautiful, whether in the flickering of flames in a wildfire or the throngs of slobbering men calling Marilyn’s name along a red carpet.

Over close to three hours, though, a few striking images and a lot of painful moments don’t necessarily add to what we already understand about objectification and sexism and the vast space between a public profile and inner turmoil. De Armas is extraordinary and much more complicated than the film, which prioritizes its cinematic language over its subject and has a lot more feelings than ideas. The result is unquestionably Dominik’s vision of an icon, but you wonder if we truly get her perspective or just another incurious agenda forced upon her. And if that’s the point, it shouldn’t be.

C+

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