Netflix is excellent at mass producing bad movies that release every week, but once or twice a year, they use their full resources to try and make something award worthy, for the past few years, they have managed to at least get some nominations and be in the best picture talk. One of their big attempts this year was Blonde, a biopic about Marlin Monroe, or Norma Gene. It has been released to some serious mixed reviews, but I find it hard to believe how much some people hated it. At times it is disturbing, and it is very provocative, but that does not make it bad, that adds to the art, even if it does not agree with one's sensibilities. The movie is almost constantly in a dreamlike state as the viewer travels through Marlin's life.
Blonde starts with Norma Gene as a young girl living in the hills of Hollywood. She lived with her mother who is not in the right head space, and her father is absent, but he is supposedly a worker in the Hollywood industry, and he is a recurring reference throughout the movie, and although he is never shown, his presence looms large over her life. Norma's mother tries to drive right into a raging wildfire, and thus the spiral of her mother begins. Shortly there after her mother is institutionalized, and only seen again once more.
Then Marlin’s rise to stardom starts after that, but it is not a smooth sailing ascent. Her rise is rife with forced backroom sexual dealings to ensure her the part, and she is continually traumatized by this multiple times. Eventually it seems like she finds some solace in a thruple with two other guys, who seemed to make her feel comfortable, or at least sometimes. This dissolves, and Marlin ends up in a different relationship with a baseball player who ends up being abusive, so she leaves, and she ends up with a nice director, who seems a good deal older than her, but they seem to get along well.
As these relationships and her career progress, she becomes pregnant multiple times, which is shown by having a weird CGI fetus floating inside of her, but each time she becomes pregnant, she ends up not having the baby, twice due to abortions and once due to a miscarriage. As time progresses, Marlin slowly seems to lose grip on reality, her substance abuse starts to skyrocket, and her performances decline. At one point in the movie, she seemed to be on the rise, and her intelligence in the movie business seemed very respectable, but she loses it all. The buildup of tragedy and mistreatment was just too much for her to bear.
Ana de Armas plays the titular role in the film, and she does a good job of doing so. I have not seen any Marlin Monroe movies or interviews, so I have no idea what she would sound like or what her mannerisms would be, but I have seen other of Armas’s movies, and she does transform to play this part. It is an interesting role to play, because as mentioned, at times, she comes off as very intelligent. She is well read, and she always seem to have a reference point for the material she is working on to another famous work. Then at other times, she does not come across as the brightest person, and other times she has to play the role of someone losing their grip on life. It is all very dramatic, and she represents all of these personalities of Marlin well.
One of the reasons that people have been against the film has been due to the film taking advantage of the tragedies that occurred in her life. People claim that there have already been other pieces of media that have capitalized on her, and that this is going too far. This raises an interesting question about taking advantage of someone else’s trauma. This is not the only piece of content on Netflix this week that has been drawing this attention to the company either. They also have a show out right now about Jeffery Dahmer. One of the people that he had attempted to attack is still alive, and the release of the series and the return of his story to the spotlight has been triggering for her, and it was not something that she wanted brought back up, which makes sense. The Marlin aspect of taking advantage of someone’s trauma does seem a little more complex, and one argument that could be made is that she does not have kids or relatives that could be reliving the trauma, but it is probably bad to be on either side of the argument.
The one thing that I found incredibly weird and at times very off putting was that language that Marlin used, and I do not mean cursing. In the movie, she had never met her father, and this was one thing that plagued her through her whole life. This was one thing that became a part of her in her relationships. So in her relationship with “the baseball player,” she would call him daddy. Then later on in her life, when she started to date the director, she would also call him daddy. It is one thing when a person has a kid, and it is another thing when a person has no kids and calls their significant other daddy all the time without having a kid. She also would refer to her fetus as baby all the time, which also just seemed weird in the way that she was doing it.
An area about this movie that confused me was its NC-17 rating. Netflix puts right by its ratings why it is rated that, and for this movie, it said for some sexual situations. “Some” seems like it is underselling the amount of nudity that is in the movie, but it is no worst than some rated R films. The most egregious part of the film is toward the beginning when the mom is abusive of her child, and then she tries to drown her. So those two aspects and the abuse that occurs throughout seems more important to the rating than what is sighted. There are multiple scenes where Marlin is clearly being taken advantage of, and these seem, more explicit than “some sexual scenes.” The reason for the rating seems like it needs to be changed some on Netflix.
Overall I thought it was a good movie, it was constantly reeling me back in throughout the movie. This is a very important aspect to have on a Netflix release, where the vast majority of people are watching it at home. It could be very easy to check out on a movie like this very early on and just be on your phone the rest of the time, but it keeps drawing you back into it. I would recommend watching it, but it is not for everyone. It is not your typical blockbuster Oscar contender, but one aspect it is great at is drawing the audience in, and it definitely does so, for better or worst. I give this movie 3.5 Stars.
Other Movies This Week:
Don’t Worry Darling: Florence Pew movies into a community with her husband that is seemingly perfect, until it is not. She finds out what is wrong with it all, and she tried to escape, in what originally seems like it will be a great movie ends up being subpar and emotionless.
Bros: A rom com that is original and one of the funniest films of the year, but it is a little long.
Smile: A well shot and sufficiently spooky film about a woman facing her demons literally and figuratively.
New Rankings:
Blonde: 3.5 Stars
Don’t Worry Darling: 2 Stars
Bros: 3 Stars
Smile: 3 Stars
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