Somewhere half way blonde actress Ana de Armas, who plays Marilyn Monroe,looks into the camera and says, “What have you got to do with my life?”
It’s a question for Monroe’s then-husband, the playwright Arthur Miller. Butit is also a question for us, the viewer. Why are we still interested in hersixty years after her death—suicide from an overdose of tranquilizers, ormurdered for her relationship with the Kennedy brothers? Is it voyeurism,disaster tourism or something deeper, more incomprehensible?
Director Andrew Dominik ( The Assassination of Jesse James by the CowardRobert Ford ) in his very freely factual film biography of the actress, sexsymbol and icon gives dozens of incentives to answer that question. Thesimplest summary: because she was a phenomenon who, because of her tragic lifeand death, but also because of the great corpus of films she left behind,remained burned into our retinas forever. Monroe as the holy trinity of theinnocent girl Norma Jeane as she was born, the sex goddess who createdHollywood and something beyond that.
That mystery is bigger than any label this or any other movie tries to put onher. Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like itHot – they are all films that belong to our cultural capital. Without Marilynthere would be no Madonna, no Lady Gaga, no discourse on stereotypes, beautyideals and victimhood.
Ana de Armas is hypnotic. she is the uncanny valley of all Marilynperformers. If you put pictures of her in blonde next to that of thehistorical Marilyn, she is more Marilyn than Marilyn ever was. This is Oscarmaterial. But you only have to watch a very small film clip of the realMarilyn to realize that her attraction is greater than ten. Blondes canreproduce.
Read also an interview with Andrew Dominik, Ana de Armas and Adrien Brodyon ‘Blonde’
Dominik was inspired for his film by the eponymous fictional biography ofJoyce Carol Oates from 2000. This resulted in a fascinating eclectic whirlwindof fragments from Marilyn’s life. A Finnegans Wake about Hollywood’s mythmachine, nightmare and fever dream. A cinematographic tour de force too, incolour, black and white and all kinds of film formats, filmed from allpossible perspectives. Shots from her vagina during abortion and miscarriagescenes and a talking fetus have already sparked controversy. When thepromotional circus for the film got underway in May of this year, Dominikpromised that there would be something in the film for everyone to shock. Andhe kept his word.
In addition, Dominiks blonde a deconstructed Freudian manual. The trauma ofMarilyn’s mentally ill mother and absent father is in every scene. InDominik’s screenplay, she emphatically calls each man ‘Daddy’. It’s sad andcreepy at the same time.
The perfidious and perverse Hollywood that Dominik portrays is #MeToo avant lalettre. Her makeup artist Whitey is not only the one who transforms her fromwoman to phenomenon time and time again, but also the one with a whole arsenalof pills in his makeup case. The moment Marilyn is dragged out of JFK’s roomas an unconscious sex doll, all you can do is cry.