Blonde - Movie Review

First off, I'm not offended by this movie. Despite how inaccurate it is, with all of it's strange and twisted presumptions. Truth is I just think it's a very confusing and pretentious waste of time, like when art geeks think a tipped over dumpster full of rubbish is somehow "art", that's basically what this film is. The reason I think this is because of the director's irritating insistence on constantly changing the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9 at nauseam! Not only that, but the film always switches from color to black and white too. Then there are scenes where the camera is hand-held, thrashing around drunkenly. Worst of all, the picture even blurs in and out of focus during chaotic moments. I absolutely hate it when movie directors go out of their way to try and be artistic like this, because all it does is take me out of the movie, this break in immersion always distracts me from the plot too. It would be like reading a comic book where the art style and color scheme randomly changes from panel to panel. Because of this, you can never tell if the scenes are supposed to be flashbacks, present tense or dream sequences. So it's not like these visual changes are here to help you understand what is real or not, for even within the same scene, aspect ratios will change, even dipping in and out of color, it's just a pretentious mess! I can understand that the director obviously wanted their movie to stand out from others, but all this achieves is a dizzying experience which is bound to give anybody a headache. You could argue this is done to get in the scrambled mind-set of Marilyn Monroe herself, to visually communicate how distressed she is in certain scenes. Admittedly, little moments like these might've been effective sparingly during very climatic scenes, but the film is unfortunately littered with tripe like this throughout the entire run time, resulting in the visual equivalent of a hideous train wreck.

Sadly, it's not just the visuals that are a disaster, but the pacing is just painfully slow. There is very little excitement in Blonde. Most scenes consist of Marilyn just delivering her lines. Very slowly. While she cries in-between speech. It all feels like Oscar bait to me, dragging out scenes for far too long, focusing heavily on Ana De Armas' performance. It just doesn't make for a very engaging watch, especially once you do some research, you'll discover that most of what you see in this film is only really speculation. The plot very loosely follows major moments throughout Marilyn's life from childhood to death, but the truth behind these events are mostly left unknown, the writer seems to just fill in their own interpretations of what they think happened. So a lot of what you see here is just fictionalized drama, made to be entertaining, yet somehow the plot still ends up being duller than a Monday morning in winter. Save for a few disturbing nightmare sequences and moments of psychological terror and a couple of erotic scenes, Blonde is honestly just a massive task to sit through.

Exploitation is unfortunately common within Hollywood, where young women like Marilyn are often abused by movie executives. It goes without saying that this is a very dark and depressing movie over all, it doesn't really highlight the glamour and fun that you would expect from a celebrity biopic like this. Considering what we do know about Hollywood's darker secrets that have been revealed throughout the years, it is sadly quite believable that many of the taboo, abusive or violent scenes within this film may have very well happened. However, considering the fact that what we see here is mostly fictional, a part of me feels dirty and annoyed by some of these darker scenes. I can't help but feel like they are only here just to shock audiences, exploiting history to tell a far darker story than what is actually the truth. Disrespecting real people like this, especially those who are dead to depict rumors as truth to unknowing audiences just feels wrong and gross to me. I could maybe let this slip if the movie and script was delivered to us in a entertaining, respectful and satisfying way. But unfortunately, Blonde is just as disturbing, as it is pretentious and mind-numbing.

I will say the production and make up crew did do a fantastic job making Ana De Armas look exactly like Marilyn, as well as the set design, cars, fashion and music all fitting the era perfectly. There are a few neat scenes where she is edited into Marilyn's real movie scenes from her career, and this effect is so flawless I honestly thought they were using old movie footage at first. Obviously there are moments where Blonde truly shines, it could've been a lot better, but it's not the worst film ever. Therefore I think this movie at the very least deserves a 2 out of 5 stars.