Blonde - 2022
You remember that survival film based on a true story set out West called 127 Hours? Well, Blonde is JUST like that, except the only person caught between a rock and a hard place for hours on end is the viewer.
Indeed, this film is by far the most perplexing one I have seen all year. For one, we know that Andrew Dominick has got the goods. We've seen his visual eye, his stylistic flair in The Assassination of Jessie James... and other pictures. Yet here we're left wondering - What is the thread that he is pulling on for nearly 3 hours in this one? It's almost entirely a mystery.
For a film that features so many white (and blonde) tones, it is all relentlessly jet black. No effective work of can be entirely single note. Yet, that is precisely what Andrew Dominick has tried to present us with here. There are no variations on the themes of misery and deprivation, of the concept of being a pawn in other power brokers' (read: rich men's) schemes.
Now that's not to say we're left entirely afield. We feel the sense of disorientation and lost control. Dominick's visual touchstones (more on this in a moment) grant us that much. But running us through umpteen abortion sequences and muddled flashbacks and inebriation motifs does not really take us anywhere. In a seeming effort to try to condemn Monroe’s abusers for their over-sexualization and dehumanization, the director has essentially crafted a torture porn session which falls prey to the very things it critiques!
Admittedly, there may have been a decent film here about the nature of persona. An exploration of the differences between “being Marilyn” vs. being Norma Jean, or her own innermost self. Of course, in this conception, the abuse she suffered at the hands of greedy men and film studios bent towards these practices would be a welcome addition. The coming fall into the depths of despair and substance abuse would only be a natural evolution at that point as well. But, it's like Dominick was so hellbent on NOT making the standard byopic that he cut the legs off the whole project. There is nowhere for our heroine to fall when she hasn't done any rising.
And yet, this thing is still a kind of marvel. The score is absolutely haunting. Several of the numbers by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis are the very quintessence of emotion and melancholy. Additionally, visually this is a real "kitchen sink" picture. We see free sweeping movements between black and white and color schemes, between standard and academy ratio formatting.
The way the sequences seamlessly move together are often jawdropping as well. One in particular slides from a cramped airplane to a red carpet with throngs of fans and back again. Moreover, Dominick just knows the conception of a shot. So many images remain lodged in my brain. Given this fact, a collapse into addiction and lost states of awareness has rarely been rendered this artistically.
But it all amounts to nothing. Or more correctly, it adds up to 165 minutes of sheer, harrowing misery. A portrait of a starlet and sexpot has never been this macabre and claustrophobic. I'm quite certain that advocates of the film would claim that this was indubitably the director's intent. This may very well be the case. But I still wish the film would have just let a little oxygen in at the seams, a few moments of respite to breathe and reflect, before the sensory assault would begin anew.
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