There is a likeness between the men in Marilyn Monroe’s life and the films made about her. The films continue exploiting her memory long after her death just as predatory men did to her physically while she was alive. None seems to have made a conscientious effort to dig deep into the mind beyond her filmstar oomph. Blonde starring Ana de Armas, which dropped on OTT this week, is the latest effort signifying Hollywood’s continued fascination with the matinee idol. Unlike past attempts the focus here is on certain disturbing facets of her life, although the film fails to form a deeper understanding of Marilyn beyond the horrifying reality it portrays.
Screenwriter-director Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is based on Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 biographical fiction novel of the same name that was already adapted into a mini-series by CBS over two decades ago. Dominik’s film, buoyed by Armas’ impressive act in the central role and technical brilliance, tries capturing the unsettling bleakness of Marilyn’s existence beneath the fame and frenzy. The idea perhaps was to strip Marilyn’s image of the very essence that defines her glamour — she was celebrated as well as objectified as a sex goddess back in her day while the film uses nudity to portray sexual violence and exploitation. The approach would seem interesting, except Dominik’s storytelling is relentless in its focus on the physical abuse that Marilyn is shown to endure, so much so important aspects of her life — including her troubled childhood and her first marriage —either find sketchy mention or have been wholly omitted from the screenplay. Blonde ends up a gloomy and convoluted film that spreads its story over 166 minutes, and is done in by its over-emphasis of the exploitation it aims to shun.
If Blonde stands out among Hollywood attempts about the iconic star it is because the film avoids overtly banking on Marilyn Monroe cliches. However, as every other fictional account of Marilyn’s life on screens big and small, Dominik cannot resist mixing reality with imagination. His screenplay bears as an outline the salient events in Marylin’s life — from career to romances and from public life to private life. The idea always gives filmmakers the scope to colour reality. If biopics are propped by the popular obsession for fame, a subject as overwhelming as Marilyn Monroe only maxes out the makers’ tendency to be cinematically imaginative. In the case of Blonde, the film is often beyond unflinching, particularly blatant in the way an abortion sequence is filmed. Factually, Dominik tries to stay in a zone between what happened and what might have happened, for there is no evidence of a lot of what goes on in the film. The broad idea, we understand, is to highlight the gender politics and sexual exploitation that mark show business.
If Dominik’s film is unprecedented for the way it seeks thematic crux in the physical brutality that Marilyn suffered in her lifetime, others attempting to narrate her story over the years have either served straightforward documentation of events or tapped into her emotional miseries to paint a troubled portrait of the late actress. The 2001 CBS miniseries, also titled Blonde and based on Oates’ novel, for instance, had Australian actress Poppy Montgomery as Marilyn Monroe playing out various high points of her life from teenage wedding to career with 20th Century Fox. The show depicts Marilyn’s growing up years with her mentally unstable mother as well as her marriages to playwright Arthur Miller and baseball star Joe DiMaggio, albeit with clinical correctness that prevents in-depth exploring of psychology. The series fails to portray Marilyn as a real person beyond its purpose of serving as a biography in motion that is based on the book, and hence lacks resonance.
Clearly, generations of Hollywood filmmakers have fumbled trying to humanise Marilyn Monroe, perhaps overawed by her heady image or perhaps because they were merely goaded by the fact that her glamour continues yielding commercial gains to this day. Different writers have taken different tacks while trying to grab audience eyeballs using Marilyn’s life story. The films and series, however, have barely managed a skin-deep understanding of the subject.
There have been over a dozen cinematic attempts centred on Marilyn Monroe, including biographies, fiction features, docu-films, and television films and series. While Blonde starring Armas stands out for its shock factor, the best recognised among the features so far is Simon Curtis’ 2011 film, My Week With Marilyn, which fetched Oscar nominations for Michelle Williams’ performance as the titular protagonist and Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier. Curtis and writer Adrian Hodges chose to focus on a specific phase of Marilyn’s life — when she was filming her 1957 release, The Prince And The Showgirl, with Olivier in London. The screenplay is based on two books by Colin Clark (played by Eddie Redmayne) — The Prince, The Showgirl And Me and My Week With Marilyn — and is more concerned about capturing an eventful phase of Marilyn’s life than trying to provide a serious insight into the subject’s psyche. Despite Williams’ laudable performance, the film remains an assembly-line biopic.
Most films about Marilyn have failed to evade that trap, letting stereotypes associated with the actress structure the narrative. The 1996 TV film, Norma Jean & Marilyn, perhaps came closest to trying to understand Marilyn and Norma. The film cast Ashley Judd as Norma Jean Dougherty and Mira Sorvino as Marilyn Monroe, with both actresses being nominated at the Golden Globes as well as the Primetime Emmy Awards. The problem with the film, despite its merits, lies in the veracity of its source material. It is largely based on the book Norma Jean: My Secret Life With Marilyn Monroe by an actor named Ted Jordan, who claimed to have had an affair with her. The fictionalised film presents Marilyn and Norma as adversaries, with the latter taking sarcastic digs at the former all along over her actions.
Ted Jordan wasn’t an exception. The fact is producers continue hunting for official or unofficial accounts of ‘intimate’ relationships that celebrities major and minor may or may not have shared about the actress. The 1991 made-for-TV film, Marilyn And Me, for instance, tries narrating an unusual Monroe story by focussing on a phase in her formative years. Susan Griffiths plays Marilyn in the film, which shows her life with writer Robert Slatzer, who claimed he had married Marilyn in 1952. Just as Norma Jean & Marilyn, the focus of Marilyn And Me seems to be creating sensationalism using the charisma of Marilyn and little else.
Most films about Marilyn have a couple of things in common. First, barring a few, most of these were made for television, which means the industry probably feels a life story of the actress is best suited for the home audience. Secondly, almost every film has an outstanding performance by the actress portraying Marilyn, irrespective of the quality of the film. Catherine Hicks’ Emmy-nominated title role in the 1980 film, Marilyn: The Untold Story, won her good reviews and big primetime ratings upon premiering on television. The film, though, merely chronicles the star’s life from childhood to death without many surprises. Marilyn: The Untold Story was a follow-up of This Year’s Blonde, also starring Hicks as Marilyn Monroe and released in the same year.
Abuse, poverty, casting couches and pin-up shoots make for easy voyeuristic appeal, and the truth is most films about Marilyn catered these. Larry Buchanan’s 1976 film Goodbye, Norma Jean and its 1989 follow-up Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn follow a formulaic path while setting up melodrama, but fail to probe the interesting subject material beyond the surface. Others like Finnish filmmaker Anna Eriksson have used the legend of Marilyn to attempt experimental cinema. Eriksson’s 2018 Finnish film, titled M, explores the bond between sexuality and death through the last days of Monroe. The film won the Grand Prix and Best Feature Film awards at the 2019 Prague Independent Film Festival and was also screened in the Venice International Film Critics’ Week section.
Given Marilyn Monroe’s ability to combine sex appeal with humour on screen, it wasn’t surprising that Hollywood has attempted a comedy drama using a slice of her life, too. The 1993 film Calendar Girl narrates a funny story about three men who arrive in Hollywood to meet Marilyn Monroe. The film’s script drew inspiration from a real-life incident about a fan named Gene Scanlon, who in 1953 arrived in the United States with a friend to meet Marilyn Monroe, and succeeded.
Films as Calendar Girl, as well as several documentaries about her life (notably, the 1963 film titled Marilyn, which was narrated by Rock Hudson, have only worked at augmenting the aura about Marilyn. Andrew Dominik’s Blonde tries to beat wake-up call, reminding there was a sordid side to Marilyn Monroe’s life. However, the film, like its predecessors, struggles to resolve Hollywood’s chaos around fathoming its subject. Marilyn Monroe, as noted critic Mary F. Pols of Time once rightly said, was “an utterly impossible woman”.
Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist, and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.
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