So Cuban cutie Ana de Armas, who lit up her scenes as the nice girl in Knives Out, is now an Oscar nominee. She’s on the Best Actress list (along with superstars Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh) for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. With careful makeup and a platinum dye job (as well as, I suspect, a plethora of wigs), she bears an uncanny resemblance to the late glamour queen. I’m impressed with how she’s managed to erase a Latin American accent while also taking on Monroe’s distinctively breathy speech mannerisms.
As strong as her performance is, I tend to think the nomination is partly an apology to de Armas for having put up with so much. If Monroe suffered hugely from Hollywood’s propensity for exploiting young women, de Armas feels like a victim too. This film—based on a highly speculative 2000 bestseller by Joyce Carol Oates—seems a great deal less interested in Monroe’s soul than in her body. There are far more bare-breast shots here than in any Roger Corman flick I can think of. And the camera’s intimate glimpses of other parts of de Armas’s anatomy are often downright gynecological. Do we really need to see, in close-up, quite so much of Marilyn’s abortion? I suspect writer/director Andrew Dominik feels this is bold filmmaking, but to me it’s an exploitation film, pure and simple.
Though Blonde takes pains to reproduce faithfully some of Monroe’s most memorable screen moments, the focus is primarily on her private life, in which misery continually gives way to more misery. There’s little Norma Jeane’s crazily addled mother, then some not-so-nice neighbors, lecherous studio bosses, two sexually questionable sons of Hollywood who share her favors, and ultimately a parade of lovers and husbands unable to fully appreciate her. We see a jealous Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) beat her up after eyeing her nude publicity photos, and an apparently happier union with playwright Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody) comes to an abrupt close after she suffers a miscarriage. Throughout there’s something I suspect is an Oates invention: Norma Jeane’s mysterious absentee father, sending a long string of letters to tell her he’ll be arriving soon for a much-delayed reunion.
The single most grotesque relationship she endures is with President John F. Kennedy, lounging on a hotel bed (really?) in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Naturally, at this crucial time in the nation’s history, POTUS needs to get a load off, so Secret Service goons have hustled a shaky Marilyn from Hollywood to D.C. Soon we’re treated to an extreme close-up of poor Ana de Armas apparently performing oral sex on the presidential you-know-what. I guess it works: our country is saved from nuclear war.
It's coincidental that I recently watched Greta Garbo in the 1930 film version of Anna Christie, a faithful adaptation of the Eugene O’Neill play about a young woman trying to leave her sordid past behind. In a 2012 documentary called Marilyn in Manhattan, the actress Ellen Burstyn recounts what she calls a “legendary” story set in the Actors Studio, where Monroe had enrolled to seriously study her craft. Apparently she joined with stage veteran Maureen Stapleton to perform a scene from the O’Neill drama. According to Burstyn, "Everybody who saw that says that it was not only the best work Marilyn ever did, it was some of the best work ever seen at Studio, and certainly the best interpretation of Anna Christie anybody ever saw. She . . .achieved real greatness in that scene." Too bad that a film honoring Monroe should be such an embarrassment.
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