Hello, readers young and old, blonde and brunette and redheaded, too!
Have you checked on your plants lately? Do they need water? Maybe one of them has a few yellow leaves it needs to get taken off. (Mine just did ― I cast my eyes to the heavens to think about how to lead off this review and saw that my pothos needed a little trimming.) No judgment ― none of us are perfect plant queers/plant parents.
Well, now. Marilyn Monroe. The name alone evokes different words, images, and feelings in everyone’s minds. Much has been discussed of her personal and professional life, and that won’t be stopping any time soon. And to that end, when I saw a trailer for Blonde, a Marilyn biopic starring Ana de Armas, I had to admit I was intrigued. How would this iteration take on one of my favorite #bicons of all time? So, I sated my curiosity and sat down to watch it and give y’all a Unicorn review on the matter.
Before I get going, I should give a whole barn house full of warnings. First of all, this review will contain SPOILERS for this 2022 drama ― I mean, it dropped recently and I wrote it the same day, so this is hot off the presses. Also, pretty much every content warning possible goes onto this one, including but not limited to: multiple displays of sexual assault, abuse of all sorts, drug and alcohol abuse, and graphic cinematography ― just to name a few.
This is not for the faint of heart, folks. Finally, if this is your first time here and you’re wondering about what the Unicorn Scale metric is or would just like a refresher, you can take a gander at that over here.
Blonde is a Netflix film adaptation based on the 2000 book of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates. It is a fictionalized take on the rise and fall of the legendary Hollywood actress Norma Jean Baker, better known by her stage name of Marilyn Monroe
What I Liked:
Um. Well, there are some excellent performances here, particularly from de Armas, Adrien Brody as playwright/third husband Arthur Miller, and Toby Huss as Whitey, Monroe’s makeup artist and perhaps one of her few true friends. The cinematography is bold and stunning to look at from almost every shot to shot. And the production design is stunningly accurate to the actual sets and places of interest in the narrative.
And that’s where the good things I have to say must come to an abrupt end.
What I Didn't Like:
I get that Oates and writer-director Andrew Dominik are taking creative liberties with Monroe’s life and real-world events, but even with that in mind, this is a brutal, BRUTAL watch. The entire narrative is incredibly reductive of a complex, nuanced person and performer who deserved far better than this dressed-up trauma porn has to offer her legacy. Instead of showing even the smallest of joys in her life, her sense of humor, or even the dog that she possessed at the end of her days, instead the script chooses to push Monroe through trauma after trauma, at a pace that is both tedious and with a sadistic meticulousness that is unnerving. I mean (and again, warning for the faint of heart here) there is absolutely no reason to show the point of view from the cervix of a vaginal canal being opened by a speculum for a forced abortion, LET ALONE DOING IT TWICE IN THE SAME FILM.
I know I’m supposed to focus on the queerness of this film and I will get to that. But I had to say at least a little of my piece and my anger at the treatment of this actress before I got to the warped, myopic take on the few queer characters that the story decides to focus on. It might prepare you for just how dirty they did this woman on multiple levels.
If this is where you think I’m going to talk about how Blonde redeemed itself by showing Marilyn as the incredible bi woman she was, you will be supremely disappointed. Oh, no ― they don’t even hint that Marilyn is or could be bi, but instead is only interested in men. The closest we get is the film showing her sharing a briefly happy triad with two other actors she supposedly, possibly had ― Edward “Eddy” G. Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams) and Charlie “Cass” Chaplin, Jr. (Xavier Samuel).
That’s right ― they straight-washed Monroe. Not only that but in the course of making sure every last person she knows (but Whitey) screwing her over in the film, the script has Eddy and Cass attempt to blackmail her second husband with nude pictures they have of Marilyn and then reveal in the final scene that Cass pretended to be her long-lost father keeping in contact with her through letters. So even the few queer characters we get here are abusive, depraved, and manipulative to the core.
The Rating:
While aesthetically pleasing at times to watch, this hollow and reductive film is trash, trash, trash.
Marilyn deserved better ― then, now, and in any future that can hold her in its mind as more than some persistent idea of her being a frightened, brittle bird in need of protection instead of the brilliant, ambitious fighter that she was. It is a willfully ignorant, sadistic film about an exceptional bi actress and person who did and does deserve so much more.
Please do not see this movie and give it any oxygen ― not even for a hate-watch or out of curiosity. You’ll do more for her memory and legacy by ignoring it and letting it get no traction than anything else you can do today ― and you’ll save yourself nearly three hours of cinematic trauma in the process.
Go check on your plants and nurture them instead. I promise you it’s time better spent.
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