Blonde (2022)

[BetterButter]

[Spartan Girl]

People are leery of both the NC17 rating and the fact that it’s based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel that was far from accurate. That being said, Ana looks great.

[MissAlmond]

I’m not feeling this movie but mad props to the hair and makeup department. 

Edited June 17, 2022 by MissAlmond

[BetterButter]

[Zmanda]

She looks great, but the accent is still there. It’s distracting. 

[Spartan Girl]

Haven’t watched it yet, but it’s getting ripped for many reasons, especially the director’s obvious disrespect for Marilyn and her movies.

But the thing that makes my mind boggle is that they apparently took EXTREME liberties with the JFK affair

Spoiler

by showing him raping her. Like what in the actual fuck?! The filmmakers basically admitted they just did it for the drama, which makes it even more messed up.

[Lady Whistleup]

I saw it and wished I didn’t. Didn’t capture any of what made MM special. The pov from her vagina was … a choice.

[Sweet-tea]

I made it halfway and gave up. It is the darkest, most depressing movie I’ve seen about MM. I know she had a sad life but they didn’t capture any of her effervescence.

I thought Ana did a good job and her voice sounded fine to me. I didn’t hear her accent. But the tone of the movie was soul-shattering and at times, profane. (I won’t list the particular scenes as I don’t want to spoil anyone.) But I couldn’t handle it. I felt like I needed to shower after watching this. 

One thing I noticed is in some scenes, her eyes looked brown. I read she wore blue contacts for the part, so maybe it was lighting or they were too dark blue? Whatever the case, it distracted me. 

Edited September 29, 2022 by Sweet-tea

[Lady Whistleup]

I wish the movie had more nuance when it came to Gladys. She did suffer from mental illness, but she also experienced an unbelievable amount of trauma. Her children were kidnapped by her abusive ex-husband and then she was abandoned by MM's father. 

MM supported her mother and continued to provide for her even after her death. There was a trust fund set up for Gladys. Their relationship was troubled but there was love there.

Gladys was a stunningly beautiful woman in her own right. I think her eyes and nose look like MM.

Edited September 30, 2022 by Lady Whistleup

[Enero]

I watched tonight while I finished up some work assignments. I will say they did a great job at making Ana look like Marilyn. I think she is the only actress to play her who really came the closest to looking like her. That said, this was pure garbage. I didn’t like how they portrayed her as almost childlike with the kid voice, constant deer in the headlights stares and obsession with having a baby. Perhaps this reflected some truth about who she was but I didn’t like it. It made her come off as a naive and thus clueless woman who didn’t have a mind of her own and was essentially led around by the men in her life. I know there was more to her than that. 

There was one brief glimmer of a woman when she went off on her agent about the minuscule pay she was being offered for Gentleman Prefer Blondes but that was it. The JFK scene was deplorable as was the scene of her being raped by the president of the unnamed movie studio. I thought the scenes depicting the early years of her marriage to Arthur Miller were beautifully shot, especially the beach scenes. But that did not make up for what was a garbage movie. The nudity was excessive and completely uncalled. I still don’t know what the deal was with her supposedly having a threesome relationship with the two guys. What was that supposed to be about? And I’m disgusted that they filmed the final death scene in the home where Marilyn actually died. So disrespectful and tacky.

Ana did look beautiful though and she did a good job considering the poor script she was working with. The guy who played DiMaggio was a good choice and Adrien Body did well as Arthur Miller too. I do agree with whomever upthread that this movie was very dark and IMO exploitive of Marilyn’s memory. 
 

[Norma Desmond]

I am a huge, huge MM fan and was looking forward to this. Wow. The script is awful. Even the Blonde miniseries with Poppy Montgomery as Marilyn did a better job with the material. That said, Ana de Armas is the lone saving grace. Great performance all around.

[Mindthinkr]

Did anyone figure out who was her father? 

[Lady Whistleup]

8 minutes ago, Mindthinkr said:

Did anyone figure out who was her father? 

DNA tests proved it to be Charles Stanley Gifford. Apparently MM had tried to contact him several times and he always hung up on her. He worked at RKO studios with Gladys.

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a41425153/marilyn-monroe-father-charles-stanley-gifford/

He died in 1965.

[Spartan Girl]

Just finished watching it. Never have I been more grateful for the fast forward button.

It reminded me a lot of Wired. The filmmakers didn’t give a shit about accuracy, depth, or even its subject matter; they just wanted to be as exploitative as possible. Marilyn deserved better and so does Ana de Armas.

There were so many scenes where I was wondering, “Does she need to be topless in this part?” Really came off as tacky.

On 9/28/2022 at 11:33 PM, Lady Whistleup said:

The pov from her vagina was … a choice.

Yes, and knowing the context of those scenes makes me side-eye the director very hard. I’ll leave it at that.

20 hours ago, Enero said:

I didn’t like how they portrayed her as almost childlike with the kid voice, constant deer in the headlights stares and obsession with having a baby. Perhaps this reflected some truth about who she was but I didn’t like it. It made her come off as a naive and thus clueless woman who didn’t have a mind of her own and was essentially led around by the men in her life. I know there was more to her than that. 

Seriously. Not saying she was a saint, but she was far more complicated and intelligent than people took her for. We did NOT need to have a scene of her having a three way in the movie theater.

20 hours ago, Enero said:

The JFK scene was deplorable as was the scene of her being raped by the president of the unnamed movie studio.

I don’t get why they felt compelled to have those sound effects in the scene with the studio president. And did we REALLY need to see the blowjob scene?! Revolting.

There was a tasteful way to do Marilyn’s death, but that sure as hell wasn’t it. Was her little dog really in the room with her when it happened?

I know the stuff with Cass and Eddy didn’t really happened, but JFC pretending to be her dad writing to her was such a shitty thing to do. And that’s another thing that I hated about this movie: you’d think that nobody in Marilyn’s life really cared about her at all. Yes, there were plenty of people that used and abused her, but she did have some friends. Hell, Joe DiMaggio may have been a crappy husband, but he was the one that got her out of the sanatorium, and this was after they split.

[Norma Desmond]

3 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

There were so many scenes where I was wondering, “Does she need to be topless in this part?” Really came off as tacky.

Yes. 99% of the times, her being topless added nothing to the scene. Incredibly tacky.

[Bill1978]

Gee reading all the comments here on this movie I think I'll stick to Smash for my education on the life and times of Marilyn.

[SunnyBeBe]

I turned it off one-third into the movie.  Something felt bad about it.  And off.  It didn’t seem like MM to me.  According to this thread, I missed a lot.  I guess I could give it another try…….but, naaah….

[reggiejax]

Ana de Armas is outstanding, but this a tough movie to watch. It is the most brutal movie thise side of Raging Bull. But this is no cinematic masterpiece (though I admit it does look good, cinematography-wise).

To go a little further with the Raging Bull comparison, Blonde is like if Scorsese thought the scene where Jake Lamotta bangs his head repeatedly on the wall of his jail cell was what the movie needed more of, so he reshot the film, giving the audience nothing but 3 hours of that.

But frankly, Blonde's biggest sin is that it gives us no indication of what made Marilyn Monroe so fascinating that we still want more about her, 60 years after she left this world. 

This film just wants to revel in her misery.

Edited October 2, 2022 by reggiejax

[Spartan Girl]

2 hours ago, reggiejax said:

But frankly, the biggest sin is that it gives us no indication of what made Marilyn Monroe so fascinating that we still want more about her, 60 years after she left this world. 

This film just wants to revel in her misery.

Bingo.

I mean for God’s sake, didn’t it occur to the filmmakers that last shot of Marilyn’s naked corpse winking at the audience and then focusing far too long on her dead feet over the mattress might be in extremely bad taste?!

[mustbekarma]

Everything in this movie was in bad taste. I don't think revel is quite the right word. It wallowed in her misery and tried to use pretty lighting and camera angles to masquerade it as art.  

The film made me want to take a dozen showers afterwards. 

[SunnyBeBe]

I actually returned to the film and did watch more of it…..even worse than what I thought.  It reminded me of what I think a certain kind of film would be…..but I can’t post the term.  You may know what I mean.  I’ve never seen one, but have read about them.  

[Lethallyfab]

Are we not allowed to say porn on this forum?  Because that’s what this is.  It’s porn, in terms of the gratuitousness of the sex/rape scenes and how frequently Ana de Armas is nude without her remotely needing to be.  Its defenders are claiming that it has to be viewed as a horror film but if it is, it is firmly in the torture porn category.

 It has no ideas about Marilyn besides constantly brutalizing her because she was constantly brutalized, as if her life contained nothing but abuse.

Joyce Carol Oates has been furiously tweeting for the last 48 hours, basically saying “oh, I’m sorry if you can’t handle the DARK TRUTH of how Marilyn’s life REALLY WAS, maybe you should skip this movie that’s far TOO EDGY for mainstream audiences.”  

Give me a break.  If you loved ‘Requiem for a Dream,’ a film so relentlessly focused on punishing its characters and punishing the audience over-and-over again for a feel-bad experience all in the name of the *incredibly deep* message that drugs are bad and destroy people’s lives, mmkay, that actually contains the depth of a DARE seminar, then this is the film for you

[Snazzy Daisy]

Exploitative • Joyless • Distasteful 

Fiction be damned. It’s like watching 3-hours of dreadful misery porn. I admit that the movie is cinematically gorgeous but it is a disgusting representation of MM. It is so disrespectful to use a real person’s name, life and reputation for dramatization, sprinkle a lot of fabrications in the storytelling then disguise it as “fiction” and “reimagining”.

It features so many repulsive things - child abuse, an explicit rape scene in the first 20 mins, titties overload, throuple, vagina POV, CGI’ed talking fetuses, the graphic vomiting scene, topless MM being smacked around by DiMaggio while calling him daddy, a close-up of MM’s bobbling head while giving JFK a BJ with an aide nearby, her inner monologue reminding herself to swallow and not to gag, MM getting raped by JFK, filming the death scene in the actual room where she died.

So many WTF quotes too:

• “Am I your good girl daddy?”
• “Baby needs to eat.”
• Fetus talking to MM “You won’t hurt me this time, will you?”
• “Is this what you killed your baby for?” while MM getting standing ovation.

MM is reduced to nothing - a sex doll with daddy issues. 😣
 

Edited October 3, 2022 by SnazzyDaisy

[Spartan Girl]

12 hours ago, Lethallyfab said:

Joyce Carol Oates has been furiously tweeting for the last 48 hours, basically saying “oh, I’m sorry if you can’t handle the DARK TRUTH of how Marilyn’s life REALLY WAS, maybe you should skip this movie that’s far TOO EDGY for mainstream audiences.”  

Oh, I wish we had a “middle finger” reaction…

[DearEvette]

12 hours ago, Lethallyfab said:

Joyce Carol Oates has been furiously tweeting for the last 48 hours, basically saying “oh, I’m sorry if you can’t handle the DARK TRUTH of how Marilyn’s life REALLY WAS, maybe you should skip this movie that’s far TOO EDGY for mainstream audiences.”  

Sigh. I could write my own book about what an out of touch trash person JCO is, but this is 100% revisionist history. 

She herself had spoken in the past (back when the book was a darling in the critic circles when it first came out 20 years ago) about how this book was 100% fiction and should not be considered a biography.  She mentioned in an interview about how she got the idea from seeing a picture of Marilyn smiling and hopeful.  And how she reminded her of so many girls from her own town who had come from broken homes (conflating tragic lives with divorced parents...).

Her book was her own extrapolation and interpretation of her ideas about Marilyn.  She didn't do any indepth research into Marilyn, she watched some of her movies and "learned about Marilyn.'  Thassit.  What a joke.

I am go glad this movie is getting drubbed both critically and commercially.  I watched about 20 mins out of curiosity and had to peace out. And the director sounds like a piece of work all on his own.

[hoodooznoodooz]

Miserable, joyless individuals created this film. I’m not even particularly a Marilyn Monroe fan, but this film disgusted me. 

[Shannon L.]

On 10/2/2022 at 10:22 PM, Lethallyfab said:

It has no ideas about Marilyn besides constantly brutalizing her because she was constantly brutalized, as if her life contained nothing but abuse.

I haven't watched the movie and I decided not to when I heard it described as a "reimagining" of her life.  Now, I won't because of what I've been reading here.  I wish I could remember the name of the Marylin Monroe biography that I watched earlier this year, but I do remember being incredibly impressed with her and felt sure that if she had lived into her senior years, she'd have eventually become a feminist putting a lot of time and money into that particular cause. 

[WritinMan]

On 10/3/2022 at 1:22 AM, Lethallyfab said:

Joyce Carol Oates has been furiously tweeting for the last 48 hours, basically saying “oh, I’m sorry if you can’t handle the DARK TRUTH of how Marilyn’s life REALLY WAS, maybe you should skip this movie that’s far TOO EDGY for mainstream audiences.” 

Interesting. She apparently forgot that she wrote a novel. I mean, it's right in the title...Blonde: A Novel.

[ebk57]

5 hours ago, Shannon L. said:

I haven't watched the movie and I decided not to when I heard it described as a "reimagining" of her life.  Now, I won't because of what I've been reading here.  I wish I could remember the name of the Marylin Monroe biography that I watched earlier this year, but I do remember being incredibly impressed with her and felt sure that if she had lived into her senior years, she'd have eventually become a feminist putting a lot of time and money into that particular cause. 

Maybe the CNN series "Reframed"? I thought I knew a lot about Monroe before, but after watching that series, I came away more impressed than ever.  I will not be watching this movie. 

[Shannon L.]

17 minutes ago, ebk57 said:

Maybe the CNN series "Reframed"? I thought I knew a lot about Monroe before, but after watching that series, I came away more impressed than ever.  I will not be watching this movie. 

Yes! That's it, thank you. It's a fantastic series. 

Edited October 5, 2022 by Shannon L.

[Spartan Girl]

Oh go fuck yourself, Andrew. We didn’t hate the movie because she wasn’t “empowered” we hated it because it was three hours of trauma porn that didn’t even bother to be accurate.

And he thinks it’s not possible to exploit her because “she’s already dead”? 🤦‍♀️😤😤😤