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Blonde -2022

Written last year, longlisted for the Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism.

Blonde – 2022

For a film purportedly about the ‘real Norma Jean’ (or what is left of her), the Great Spirit that is Marilyn Monroe looms large in perpetuity over the narrative, to the point where, as often happens with biopics, the famous images necessarily dominate. Besides, what would the subject be without them? Where would the interest lie in Norma Jean Baker without her conjoined twin? Marilyn stands above the grate, white dress billowing. Marilyn smiles at us with bedroom eyes. Marilyn cries, and finally, Marilyn dies. The Norma Jean that was has by this time faded into the background completely. Presumption takes the place of knowledge when there is very little information to be found that isn’t fabricated by those who knew her the best, honest, or would have known her best or even saved her if only they could have met her, scout’s honour. The controversy of Blonde, shared with the Joyce Carol Oates novel on which it is based, seems to lie chiefly in how many liberties it is appropriate to take when telling the story of a deceased subject who appears to have suffered enough, frankly.

The first act of the film is a passably sensitive examination of a troubled childhood, a sequence of maternal alcoholism and mental illness, paternal absenteeism and eventual near abandonment of poor Norma Jean, what we now can clearly see as the fatal starting gun to her inevitable death race. The second act, the longest, is much wobblier in quality, so brimming with passion play pathos (and talking foetuses) as to be almost comical. After a few scenes with Showgirls-esque line delivery from the principal players, one is tempted to discard the film as yet another piece of underdeveloped Marilynalia, but perhaps it is necessary to look deeper. Ana de Armas (who apparently received approval for her performance from Marilyn herself, such is her omnipotent loyalty that she still makes time for fans from the hereafter) appears on the film poster in perfect Marilyn drag, all thick red lipstick and bleached curls, and the likeness really is rather uncanny at times. She does an impressive job of portraying all the Marilyns we know and love. Marilyn as giggling, dizzy, fizzy movie star, Marilyn as Dostoyevsky reading intellectual and Actors Studio disciple, Marilyn as a grown-up little girl still aching for the love of a father figure, Marilyn as wife, Marilyn as almost-mother, Marilyn as abused object of male (specifically Kennedy) lust and finally, Marilyn the most famous corpse in the world, sprawled upon her satin sheets. Unfortunately, de Armas’ performance as a believable Marilyn is patchy, giving the impression of a Marilyn waxwork or, at darker moments, an act of necromancy gone horribly, horribly wrong. Marilyn the smiling, shining star, transformed into a pitifully weeping child, each tear lavished with attention, the famous red rictus pained and hinting at the horrors to come, as come they do in the third act, the spinning camera turning Marilyn’s Hollywood bungalow into a disorientating house of horrors, claustrophobic Blair Witch impressions in abundance, the dark fairies finally arriving to steal the princess away for good, to eat her up and swallow her.

It is as a horror film that Blonde gives the most satisfactory viewing. As a traditional biopic it is a borderline offensive exercise in stretching artistic licence to its absolute limits. As a raw piece of reflection on Hollywood’s treatment of women, it is too voyeuristic and fetishistic, all-too male to be taken seriously. It does however, work masterfully when considered as an expression of the great booby-trap of fame. Marilyn as the corrupted ideal, a glittering object of fantasy transformed into abjected object of ghoulish pity, to be enjoyed and reviled in equal measure. Ultimately, it says more about ourselves than about her. It speaks to our tabloid hunger for pain and pity. After the execution we soak our handkerchiefs in their blood then wipe our tears with it. In this sense, the Marilyn of Blonde functions as a cipher for several familiar stories of tragic Hollywood doom.

Marilyn’s persistence in our memory is reflective of our continued reverence for sainthood, of death without putrefaction, an object corrupt yet incorrupt. We want her both as we remember her when alive, and we intone the piteous circumstances of her death time and again, in songs, in books, in films. If we view Blonde as a forceful cultural exorcism of one of our most eminent departed, every possible instance of pain considered in conscientious detail, and ended with a full stop, perhaps when the next nostalgia cycle comes around the necromancers will have nothing left to resurrect. No more illusions left to shatter, Marilyn can rest in peace, lipstick, diamonds and satin sheeted death all but forgotten. An unlikely story. The Blonde remains.

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Car crematorium

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On the edge of the deep blue expanse (which isn't that expansive or that deep, actually)