Norma Jean said, “Perfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
It was night three of a Singapore visa run when ex-pats left Bali to apply for a visa. After having a big night out with a bunch of lovely ladies who lived in Singapore, I was exhausted. It was also a challenge being in a big city; a little like the island girl from Bali goes to the big city.
The only plan I had for my last night was to finish cleaning my friend’s apartment where I was staying, flop down, and watch a movie. Never been very good with remotes, I called my friend to get instructions, only to hear her say, “I’m not sure if the TV is working, I couldn’t get it to work the last time.” My heart sank. Pressing the remote as instructed, the Netflix logo popped up with the familiar happy ping. Yes, it’s working I heaved a sigh of relief while the promo of Blonde- the feature movie- appeared. Perfect- I wanted to see it.
Making myself a cuppa, I snuggled onto the red leather lounge, put my feet up on the coffee table and prepared for the two-hour forty-six-minute movie.
The movie Blonde is the story of Norma Jean Mortenson, aka Marilyn Munroe, who charters her life from start to tragic finish. It spanned from 1926 – 1962 and detailed her miraculous rise from the orphanage to being one of the most enduring and iconic movie stars.
I’m not a filmmaker, nor a movie critic but I do watch a lot of movies and watch them with a critical eye. The director Andrew Dominik adapted the movie from the book by Joyce Carole Oats, a fictional adaptation of Marilyn’s life. The movie cleverly separated the two-character traits of Marilyn and Norma Jean into two separate identities. Marylyn, the bespoke designed comedic sex symbol and Norma Jean, the vulnerable, damaged, highly intelligent woman. The director achieved this by subtly switching from colour to black and white. When telling the Marilyn's side of the story, he shot in black and white, giving her a sense of distance and separation. In contrast to the colour version when telling Norma Jean’s real-life story, increasing the intensity and fragility of the woman.
Ana de Armas, played Marilyn, portraying the many aspects of this complex woman. Although Ana is not voluptuous like Marilyn, she managed to carry herself and move in the sexual way Marilyn did, even though she in a typical modern-day beauty, tall, lean and fit. She captured her facial movements and accent, even though in real life she is a Spanish- Cuban actress. After six months of dialect training, she mastered the breathy staccato cadence and American accent that was Marilyn baby- blonde signature voice. Ana also embraced Marilyn and Norma Jean’s vulnerability and intense fragility including the flip- side of the flamboyant public figure that craved recognition and attention. Ana nailed the full spectrum in uncanny authenticity and likeness.
On chatting with friends, the film generated comments like - “It’s just so sad, I had no idea. I felt very uncomfortable.” But most said, “it’s just so sad.”
Yes, it was incredibly sad, it’s not a pretty movie, it’s not at all light and fluffy, nor is it sensationalist or morbidly dark. It just tells a story of a woman who rose to success despite incredible odds. How an emotional tortured young girl with a severely psychopathic mother managed to rise as far as she did. It took brains and fortitude and determination to rise as far as she did. She was far from being the dumb blonde that her film characters portrayed.
But what triggered me was the abuse of women, especially in the movie industry. How Marilyn was repeatedly raped, abused, and compromised to get ahead in a world of Harvey Weinstein’s - misogynist white men that had the power to control women. This abuse was also present in her marriage to Joe DiMaggio, the jealous baseball player who regularly beat and controlled her, fuelling her deep- seeded lack of self-esteem, her depression and possibly her bipolar condition. The root of her neurosis was the abandonment of a father, never knowing who he was, and the abuse of a mentally tortured mother. She searched for a father figure, any man that would love her, be her daddy, calling her husbands daddy.
Regardless, her career continued to thrive, making twenty-nine movies over the nine years of her acting career– that’s three to four movies a year. She had become a money-making machine for the Studios. They worked her to the bone, the studio doctors drugging her with barbiturates, uppers and downers to keep her going, forcing her to be addicted.
There were criticisms about the movie that it was not truthful. I ask you, what is the truth? Ask three different people their version of the same event and each reply will be a different response. What the director and scriptwriters did was portray a version, with subtle overlapping possibilities and cinematic suggestions. Just a flash of a man standing behind a door, maybe a CIA agent, in her room as she committed suicide. In her deluded paranoid state was she imagining it or was it real? The movie confirms neither. It leaves the viewer to choose what they want to see or believe.
Throughout the movie with the brutal scenes of her childhood abuse and the flashbacks, she was never portrayed as a victim. Her persecution was obvious. What was clear was her ability to bounce back and stay true to her dream – to be a star, to be a fabulous actress, to be the best she could be. I found this incredibly inspiring.
But I did become enraged.
I have deep respect and sympathy for the gay movement, black and civil rights, and any persecution of minorities. But women are not a minority. We are basically fifty percent of the world’s population and yet only in this century have Women’s Rights escalated to a vague level of equality with the ME-TOO movement gaining traction and power. The tragedy that only fifty-plus years ago a talented woman like Norma Jean had to endure rape, abuse, and control to become Marilyn and ultimately take her own life. Watching her play dumb, being a sex object, being ridiculed, and being used by men to have a career made me angry. The clever way the director made the faces grotesque and deformed of the paparazzi and the hordes of men clambering to touch her, to see her, to leer at her, was again a play on the fragility of her inner and outer worlds.
So, contemplate when you watch Blonde, don’t see it as just the Marilyn/ Norma Jeans story, but a story of a brave woman, a story of many women, who rose from extreme emotional torture and made something of themselves. At what cost do women have to endure to succeed? In Marilyn’s case - her life.
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