Julianne Nicholson

Blonde

03/10/22

Netflix

Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, based on a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, is an art film with a capital ‘A’. Given a running time close to three hours and presented in a whole variety of aspect ratios, it purports to be the inside story of Norma Jeane Baker – or Marilyn Monroe, as she’s better known. One overriding message comes through loud and clear: if there were any joyful moments in the star’s life, they were few and far between. This is the tale of a young woman who is repeatedly betrayed and brutalised by just about everybody she comes into contact with.

We first encounter her as a little girl (Lily Fisher), living with her abusive, disturbed mother, Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), who nearly ends both their lives by driving headlong into the midst of a bush fire. As an opening, it’s powerful and arresting – but from this point, the story takes a seismic jump through time, where we discover Norma/Marilyn (Ana de Armas) chasing roles in Hollywood, largely by allowing herself to be thrown down onto the casting couch and horribly abused by unnamed ‘producers’. The problem here is that Dominik, who also wrote the screenplay, seems to assume that everybody watching is going to be so well versed in Monroe’s career that we’ll instinctively know who’s who. It’s not always easy to follow and, for those not in the know, it’s hard work.

The overall theme here is about father issues. From the beginning, Norma Jeane’s Mother shows her photographs of a mysterious man who, she claims, is her father, once a big star in Hollywood movies. Norma Jeane consequently spends most of her life searching for him, even calling her various partners ‘Daddy’. The story leaps back and forth in time and we’re given insights into her doomed marriage to Joe Di Maggio (or ‘Ex-Athlete’, as Bobby Cannavale’s character is billed) and her equally ill-fated relationship with ‘The Playwright’ (Adrien Brody, looking the dead spit of Arthur Miller).

This is hardly a fun-filled ride. We see a harrowing abortion scene, which definitely feels pitched as an anti-abortion polemic, and there’s an equally horrible account of the miscarriage Monroe suffers while married to Arthur Miller. A brief and sordid encounter between Monroe and ‘The President’ (Caspar Philipson) is about as repugnant a sex scene as I’ve ever witnessed.

As if in an attempt to lighten the mix, there are accomplished recreations of several of Monroe’s most iconic film roles, but the swings in tone are extreme and it feels suspiciously like being alternately sprinkled with sugar and dragged through a cess pit.

Ana de Armass offers an accomplished performance in the lead role, inhabiting Monroe’s manic persona with great skill – but Blonde feels increasingly like a big bumper pack of fireworks, occasionally shooting off fabulous cinematic dazzlers but, more often than not, offering a selection of damp squibs. What’s more, the film would benefit I think, from a more stringent edit, cutting out those slower sections where the story is allowed to drag.

It’s worth seeing, but be warned – it’s not the straightforward biopic that you might expect.

3.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Monos

30/10/19

In a remote mountain hideout, somewhere in Colombia, eight teenage guerrillas are killing time. They belong to some unspecified rebel organisation, and their main purpose is to watch over an American captive, referred to simply as Doctora (Julianne Nicholson). The youths all have the anonmity of nicknames and they pass the long hours playing bizarre sports, exercising, arguing, having sex and recklessly discharging semi-automatic weapons, in some cases with catastrophic results.

From time to time, The Messenger (Wilson Salazar) rides over the hill and puts these feral youngsters through the wringer, instructing them to work their bodies to the limits of their endurance, encouraging them to inform on each other in order to further exert his malign influence over them. We learn nothing about the organisation they work for – or even why Doctora is being held hostage in the first place – but strangely, this all serves to make writer/director Alejandro Landes’ story ever more mesmerising as it unfolds.

There’s so much to relish here: the stunning location cinematography, the raw performances from the young actors (particularly from Sofia Buenaventura as the conflicted ‘Rambo’) and the oppressive feel of the isolation the eight-strong team are forced to endure. Watching this is an ordeal, but in the best sense of the word.

In the second half, after a violent skirmish with Doctora’s would-be rescuers, the team take their captive into deep jungle, where she attempts to engineer an escape – and the film veers into action/adventure territory. There are breathless chases and dangerous plunges down wild river rapids, all of which keep me perched on the edge of my seat right up to the final shattering frame.

There are evident references to other stories here, most noteably to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies – indeed, one scene is a direct homage to it. There are other images that wouldn’t look out of place in Apocalypse Now or Aguirre: Wrath of God. But such comparisons can sometimes serve to diminish a film’s worth, and Monos is very much its own creature, a brilliant and intelligent meditation on the nature of indoctrination.

If you can see this on the big screen, so much the better. It’s a stunner.

5 stars

Philip Caveney