Blonde

Year 15, Day 26 - 1/26/23 - Movie #4,327

BEFORE: The junk store that was a few blocks away from us in Brooklyn closed down, which raises a question, what happens to all that junk?  The place was run by an older Jewish man and had been there forever, this was maybe his life's work, collecting all this junk from people who left it with him as mitzvahs.  I've been known to bring things I didn't want anymore there in the middle of the night, rather than throw them away, and I tended not to shop there, because I didn't want to encounter any of my old stuff. But for the last two days there's been a line of junk trucks, those "we haul your junk away" companies, and as a collector/hoarder myself, that's got to be tough, watching your collection get taken away.  This is all stuff that this guy found or was given and he thought he could buy it for pennies and sell it for dollars, and things just didn't work out that way. Now somebody else, or a lot of somebody elses has to go through all that stuff to determine what's "good junk" and what's "bad junk" and sell the good stuff and throw away the bad. But this is going to happen to everybody's piles of stuff someday. 

Ana de Armas carries over again from "The Gray Man" - and what great luck that I scheduled this one in advance for the same week that Oscar nominations came out.  Honestly, I had no idea she would get nominated, and I also have no idea what her chances are against Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett. I guess maybe I'll know a little more after watching this movie, which is nearly three hours long. Oh, boy, I'm in for the long haul tonight, thankfully I don't have to be at work tomorrow until 3 pm. 

THE PLOT: The story of actress Marilyn Monroe, covering her love and professional lives. 

AFTER: How can I take any biopic seriously after I watched "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story", which lampooned all of them at the same time, and made the whole process seem rather ridiculous?  I mean, we know now that telling someone's story so long after the events took place is a process that is NEVER going to be 100% truthful, so why even bother?  "Truthiness" is the best you can hope for, once rumors and innuendo have been added to the facts over the decades, and the people who were THERE are no longer HERE.  So there's always, always going to be a big dose of speculation involved, and we come to a movie to tell us things - how many of those things, therefore, didn't really happen, and come from the "rumors" side rather than the "facts" side?  

(SIDE NOTE: Both actors who played Al Yankovic's parents in "Weird" appear here tonight in "Blonde" - Julianne Nicholson played Marilyn Monroe's mother and Toby Huss played her handler/make-up artist/drug dealer Allan "Whitey" Snyder.  It's comforting to know that if I hadn't watched "Weird" when I did, there was another path to get there - but it's bizarre because in some weird way, this means Al Yankovic and Marilyn had the same mother, so they're kind of like brother and sister?  Just me?)

"Weird" chose the path of not caring about the truth, and making a big joke out of the whole process, but I doubt many other films are going to be able to get away with that.  Other films, like "Blonde" are going to be held under a microscope, and some people are going to freak out because the screenwriter took a few liberties, and maybe some other people are going to appreciate the deep dive here, the way that the film didn't leave anything out, including some subplots that are (probably) based on rumors and such.  But most likely the real true Marilyn Monroe fans already know everything about her life that they've been able to process, and they'll get on the internet anyway after watching this and find something to complain about.  Even so, how do you condense the 36 years of a woman's life down to three hours?  Seems impossible without leaving something out, right? 

This is a warts-and-all portrait of Marilyn, I don't know if the strategy here is to make us all feel better about our lives because well, at least we're not as effed up as she was.  Right?  I get it, this is timely now because of the "me too" and "Time's Up" movements, it hearkens back to the days when a studio executive, here code-named "Mr. Z" could rape a starlet and get away with it, because she really wanted to get ahead, and that was the fastest route toward getting a role in a big Hollywood movie.  It's disgusting to us now, but back then that was the system that needed to (someday) get torn down.  It's just sad that it took 60 or 70 years for things to change and for Hollywood predators to get shamed and sued out of the business. Now, how do we tend to view actresses like Marilyn, who took advantage of the system by going along with it, in order to get their first big roles?  Were they calculating geniuses who sold their bodies for fame, or were they innocent victims of a flawed predatory studio system?  Discuss. 

Before that, Norma Jean's mother had a nervous breakdown, and tried to drown her in the bathtub on a night when a wildfire in the Hollywood Hills made her somehow realize that Norma Jean's father left BECAUSE of Norma Jean. (The identity of Marilyn Monroe's father is a bit more complicated than this, but there's just not enough time here to unravel it all...). After that, Marilyn posed for artsy nude photos (calendars and "Playboy") and entered into a non-monogamous thrupple situation with Charles Chaplin Jr. and Edward G. Robinson Jr., which I never knew about until now.  I mean, whatever lights your candle, sure, as long as all the players are consenting adults, it's fine.  But then various agents, studio executives and publicists told Marilyn to get out of that situation - probably because they wanted a shot at her themselves.  

Marilyn was told to "protect herself" but she probably didn't know what this meant, because she got pregnant with Charles Chaplin Jr.'s baby, and chose to get an abortion because she didn't want to miss out on the role in "Gentlmen Prefer Blondes" - so we see, time and time again, that every advancement in Hollywood comes at a price, that's a common theme here.  Before the abortion, though, Marilyn has conversations with the unborn fetus, which is a narrative choice, I guess, but it's one that hems dangerously close to being pro-life, so now we've got to talk about THAT.  I guess maybe pro-lifers and pro-choicers are just going to view these scenes differently, each side is going to see whatever they want to see that's going to support their own causes. Either Marilyn was delusional and imagined these conversations with her fetuses - three different fetuses over the course of the movie, with three different fathers, yet she reasons them to be "the same baby", which just isn't possible.  

Did Marilyn Monroe have one abortion and one miscarriage?  Or two abortions and one miscarriage?  The unspoken implication is that the third pregnancy would have come from sex with JFK, and perhaps she was drugged and whisked away in the middle of the night to have that pregnancy terminated, because the government couldn't risk the public knowing that JFK was cheating on his wife, but come on, everybody knew he was.  But that's open-ended here, as Marilyn tells herself that the second abortion was all just some crazy dream she had - so, umm, what's with all the blood?  

All of this leads me to think about exploitation, which is another running theme here. If Marilyn was exploited by the Hollywood system - put on display, packaged, sold like meat to the public to raise money for the studios, publicized, raped, turned into every man's (and a few women's) fantasy, used, abused, beat up, battered around, sent up and shot down, OK, it is what it is. But then if there's a movie that details all of that, aren't we exploiting her all over again, in much the same way?  Discuss. 

Arguments for Ana de Armas winning an Oscar - she really captured the essence of Marilyn, she may not have looked or sounded exactly like her, but her mannerisms, the feelings, the vibe she gave off was spot on.  And Hollywood just LOVES giving out Oscars to actors playing classic Hollywood people, right?  (Umm, except for "Mank" which fizzled out, and I wasted a slot on.)

Arguments against Ana de Armas winning an Oscar - she's young, this is her first nomination, and voters may consider the nomination itself as a reward for her.  Also, there are already two powerhouses in that category who are getting all the press right now. (Still, don't count anybody out at this stage...). But there's the reputation of the awards to think about - there's a fair amount of nudity and sex in this film, and also a couple abortions, and also Marilyn gives an HJ and a BJ to JFK, does that really seem Oscar-worthy at the end of the day?  Discuss.

Also starring Adrien Brody (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Bobby Cannavale (last heard in "Sing 2"), Xavier Samuel (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Julianne Nicholson (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Toby Huss (ditto), Caspar Phillipson (last seen in "MIssion: Impossible - Fallout"), Sara Paxton (last seen in "The Front Runner"), David Warshofsky (last seen in "Beatriz at Dinner"), Evan Williams, Michael Masini (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Rebecca Wisocky (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Ned Bellamy (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Eric Matheny (last seen in "J. Edgar"), Catherine Dent (last seen in "Nobody's Fool"), Haley Webb, Patrick Brennan (also last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Scoot McNairy (last seen in "A Quiet Place Part II"), Lucy DeVito (last seen in "Dumbo"), Chris Lemmon (last seen in "Swing Shift"), Dan Butler (last seen in "Crazy, Stupid, Love."), Garret Dillahunt (last seen in "Widows"), Lily Fisher, Tygh Runyan (last seen in "K-19: The Widowmaker"), Michael Drayer (last seen in "Nerve"), Ryan Vincent, Rob Brownstein (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Sonny Valicenti (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Ethan Cohn (last seen in "The Con Is On"), Mike Ostroski, Skip Pipo, Claudia Smith, Mary-Pat Green (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Allan Havey (last seen in "Bombshell"), Ron West, Spencer Taylor, Tereza Rizzardi, Ravil Isyanov (last seen in "The Good German"), Tim Ransom, Christopher Kriesa, Tatum Shank, Andrew Thacher, Dominic Leeder, Colleen Foy (last seen in "There Will Be Blood"), Eden Riegel (last seen in "Year One"), Lidia Sabijic, Bomber Hurley Smith, with archive footage of Tony Curtis (last seen in "Wolfgang"), George Sanders (last seen in "Foreign Correspondent")

RATING: 5 out of 10 men she called "Daddy" (ewww....)