"Blonde", a film adapted from a Joyce Carol Oates novel, reproduces the life of the Hollywood sexy icon Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe has a difficult and turbulent childhood. After reaching maturity, she becomes Hollywood's All-American girl and experiences several marriages and some love without results. "Blonde" blurs the boundary between fact and fiction and explores the growing gap between her public self and private self by depicting the above scenes.
As the director of this film, Andrew Dominik has directed some personalized films, such as "The Assessment of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and "Killing Them Softly". Ana de Armas, a well-known Cuban beauty, plays Monroe. The cast of the film is very strong, and Ana, the player of Monroe, in the stills also bears a striking resemblance to Monroe.
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Unfortunately, the film hasn't been well recognized by the audience and media since it was on.
Most people are dissatisfied with its story, but I think they ignore the ingenious image creation. The pictures in this film are very beautiful and full of imagination. I think this film is underestimated.
Let's first take a look at the poetic scenes in the film. Here I list some typical examples.
1. The film tells Monroe's tragic childhood in the beginning. There's a big forest fire in Hollywood. Gladys Pearl Baker, Monroe's mom, flees with the 7-year-old Monroe and drives through the fog and fire to seek refuge from her father. The image is very absorbing, and the terrible big fire looks as beautiful as snow. It implies that Monroe's poignant life is as fleeting as the beautiful fire.
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2. The erotic scene between Monroe and Charles Chaplin, Jr., the son of the famous American director Chaplin, and Edward Robinson Jr., the son of famous actor Edward Robinson. In the last scene of the play, the quilt on the bed turns into Niagara falls. And the Niagara falls scene once appeared in an ad for Monroe. Such a scene change is very imaginative. The transition from the erotic scene to the theater implies Monroe's sexy life.
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3. The director distorted the facial expressions and mouth shapes of fans and photographers, the participants of the premiere of "Some Like It Hot". Although they're laughing happily, they're full of terrible obsession and loss of control. The harsh and luminous spotlights describe how Monroe is engulfed by public attention. It's worth noting that all of Monroe's die-hard fans in the film are males.
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4. Clever editing techniques are introduced in the second half of the film. The drug addict Monroe stumbles on the plane and goes to a cinema strangely. She takes a plane and then gets in a car. And then she has a car accident and sees her husband's face become vague. These pictures are used to capture Monroe's deviation from reality. This sense of powerlessness and loss of control conveys Monroe's hesitation, that is, "I don't know where I wake up and why I am here every day".
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5. The pictures of the whole film "Blonde" are color sometimes and black and white sometimes. The changing picture proportions seem to reflect the doubts and confusion in Monroe's mind and also symbolize that this much-watched female star has diversified life modes. All these are shown in photos and videos, and no one sees her personally.
It's a pity that gorgeous pictures can't hide the insipid story.
The script of the film is really bad, and the image of Monroe in the film is unacceptable. Its failure doesn't mainly lie in deviation from reality. What's worst, it doesn't depict a "miserable" heroine but a "stupid" one. The whole film takes Monroe's insecurity due to the loss of her father's love as a clue and focuses too much on her "looking for her father" in life.
The character image of "Blonde" Andrew Dominik displayed is fragmented. The interpretation of Monroe's childhood shadow is roughly simplified into an Electra complex. Being deeply rooted in her life, this Electra complex pushes the story forward. Monroe's failed marriages; Monroe's fragile emotions; Monroe sexiness in films; everything about Monroe is attributed to her Electra complex. Fact because the world-known star devotes her whole life to looking for her father the director presents us can hardly convince us.
Thus, the audience can't form a spiritual link with the heroine when watching this film. Like her in history, Monroe in the film "Blonde" is still just an object observed by the audience. She is a fragile woman who has no resistance and lacks subjectivity.
In the film, the desperate Monroe is eventually doomed to perish. She dies alone in her apartment, leaving only a glamorous corpse. This is what the film wants to convey to us. A Hollywood corpse is a soulless form despite its exquisite design.
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