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diamonds wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 1:23 pm Teaser

I love how the rating is NC-17 for "Some sexual content"! The look of the film appears quite nice and it goes without saying that de Armas absolutely looks the part.

This will be released September 23 on Netflix, and the runtime is being listed as 166 minutes!

Roger Ryan wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:00 pm

diamonds wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 1:23 pm Teaser

I love how the rating is NC-17 for "Some sexual content"! The look of the film appears quite nice and it goes without saying that de Armas absolutely looks the part.

I was going to say the same thing, you have R-rated films with "graphic" nudity and "strong" sexual content listed in the rating, but this gets NC-17 for "some" sexual content?

yoloswegmaster wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:11 pm This will be released September 23 on Netflix, and the runtime is being listed as 166 minutes!

Well, it is based on an 800+ page novel. Joyce Carol Oates has written some lengthy novels in her time, but this is the longest.

GaryC wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 5:54 pm

yoloswegmaster wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:11 pm This will be released September 23 on Netflix, and the runtime is being listed as 166 minutes!

Well, it is based on an 800+ page novel. Joyce Carol Oates has written some lengthy novels in her time, but this is the longest.

Joyce Chopra's 2001 adaptation was a 330-minute miniseries. Dominik delivers the shortest Blonde yet!

GaryC wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 5:54 pm

yoloswegmaster wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:11 pm This will be released September 23 on Netflix, and the runtime is being listed as 166 minutes!

Well, it is based on an 800+ page novel. Joyce Carol Oates has written some lengthy novels in her time, but this is the longest.

How is the novel? Is it actually any good?

Harvest wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 1:12 am

GaryC wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 5:54 pm

yoloswegmaster wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:11 pm This will be released September 23 on Netflix, and the runtime is being listed as 166 minutes!

Well, it is based on an 800+ page novel. Joyce Carol Oates has written some lengthy novels in her time, but this is the longest.

How is the novel? Is it actually any good?

I liked it a lot when I read it twenty-two years ago, but then Joyce Carol Oates is the author I've read more by than any other alive or dead - about fifty of her now more than seventy novels or standlone novellas. It's probably one of the more approachable Oates novels if you haven't read her before, even though its her longest. It's not my favourite of hers though.

Harvest wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 1:12 am How is the novel? Is it actually any good?

I loved it when I first read it in 2006, then decided to tackle it again in 2011 or so and was just as impressed by it the second time. It's my favorite thing Oates has written by far, a sprawling and phantasmagoric nightmare-vision of classic Hollywood. If it were told in a more straight-forward "realistic" way it probably would come off belabored and obvious, especially since by now we are well aware that the halcyon days of Hollywood were mostly awful to women. But because the tone of the book is so surreal it's able to sustain its epic length. There are a lot of scenes of rape or sexual humiliation and these admittedly begin to feel numbing by the end, though perhaps this too is part of the shattering effect that Oates is going for.

In short Blonde is about as far away from something like My Week With Marilyn as you can get. So I'm encouraged to hear that the movie is going to be long and probably pretty disturbing and uncompromising, as would befit the source material.

If all the sex scenes are as upsetting as the rape scenes in Irreversible or Fincher's Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, it might explain why it's getting an NC-17 for "some sexual content".

Link to some new Blonde stills released this morning. A few exciting Dominik quotes in there at the bottom as well. Seems to be missing a photo I saw elsewhere though.

Man, this comparison pic. I thought they were the same at first.


Ana De Armas and Adrien Brody as Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller in the biopic ‘Blonde’ (2022)

^ Ah, I spotted the difference: Arthur Miller in the top photo is not wearing a wristwatch!

De Armas does Monroe's husky voice but doesn't even try to adopt an American accent. I wonder whether it was a purely creative decision to use her natural Cuban-Spanish accent—has de Armas done accent work (American or otherwise) in any other performances? Either way, this adds an element of defamiliarization that I find very intriguing in this role.

This isn't just the greatest movie of the year, but the greatest biopic I've ever seen. It's an arthouse-biopic with the heaviest leanings on the poetic inspirations of Art Films, a channel sewn together from nonlinear memory, refusing to abide by an internal logic that would pretend to understand Monroe any better than she understands herself. Spencer, this is not (it's actually a lot more like Desplechin's Tromperie than anything else I can think of offhand). Dominik elides any merits in biographical objectivity to dive headfirst into a narrative, aesthetic, and psychological whirlwind of unhinged subjectivity. I cannot stress enough that, above all else, this is the most determined, messy and pure exercise aimed at engaging with a person's subjectivity. Whether or not it's all Truth hardly matters. The perceptions are real because the experience is felt, and all of that matters with supremacy in this isolated vacuum of De Armas' exhibition of Norma Jean's lonely existence.

It would be cheap to declare this a one-note mission to portray a ruthless nightmare of powerlessness, oppression, abuse, and neglect, because for all of the intentionally overstated bits (i.e. a cheekily obvious and concise sexist conversation detailing Miller's repulsed inability to perceive of a dominant trait of cruelty in a woman that he doesn't want to see, but total willingness to welcome feedback about a woman's inability to read), there are far more elliptical demonstrations of the elusive grasp Monroe has on herself, as much as her surroundings, including the parental and romantic intimacy she craves the most. The range is vast, covering higher concepts all the way down into the crevices of the internal. The film is sociologically clear but psychologically nebulous, reflecting Norma's own clouded hold on her intangible identity, which transcends the typical dimensions we're fed in biopics or character-driven narrative films, making room for the depths of the corporeal and the spiritual without a firm grip on either domain.

Yes, we're made quite aware that Norma Jean is playing a 'role' as Marilyn Monroe in her own life, alienated based on the dissonance between a forcibly-tattooed image of her and her 'true self'*, imprisoned by an identity thrust upon her by the public. But what Dominik has to say about our fragile relationship to our identity as moderated by a frenzied, oppressive -and depressingly palpable, physical, and masculine- higher power is profound in how abstract he allows the text to be while still keeping it as text, as close to our face as he can reach through the celluloid. Stylistically, this is spectacular. The playfulness with the aspect ratio, Godardian manipulations of soundtrack, and so much more obsessive-compulsive tinkering is a filmlover's paradise that will only reap greater rewards on repeat viewings. But Dominik's greatest use of technique is in the eclectic shifts in form, which are jarring and unpredictable and perfectly mimic Monroe's instinct of thwarted belongingness - a disorganized chaos of mental state and obfuscated sense of self.

Fantasies of the mind function like movies within the film, reflexively clashing with violent abolishments of dreams. Reality is evaded and magnetized, at times through the most imaginatively absurdist, fevered ideas put into graphic form. Dreams become nightmares, traumas are temporarily sublimated into dreams, self-constructed delusions are seen as neither wholly tragic nor saving graces -for that would simplify them too much into a hardened binary categorization, which would uncharitably assist us in succinctly diagnosing Norma (and, in turn, fulfill the lame charges unfairly lobbed against this film). Instead, Dominik implements surreal tactics that sever Monroe from herself and us from a grounded sense of comprehension, and in that we share the same need she does, feel the same broad discomfort, and empathize on the only fair terms- on the only common ground we can authentically foster.

The (many, including my theatre-buddy) naysayers who are scorching this project saw a completely different movie than I did. In general, I find the uniform accusations against this film symptomatic of a tired argument that suppresses important stories from being told by deciding that any film that attempts to capture the feeling of being exploited is only furthering that exploitation. It's a catch-22 situation, and especially troubling to know that so many other eyes and ears and hearts and souls absorbed the same film and read anything other than unconditional validation and dignifying of Norma Jean by the work's artists. Dominik demands we witness this perspective with fervent urgency, especially in an elongated denouement that imbues all formalist approaches from fixed-camera, clear-lensed, direct sobriety to heightened artistic allegory in the same scene, and references everything from Fire Walk with Me (complete with a score reminiscent of Angelo Badalamenti's Laura Palmer ballads) to Citizen Kane, before rejecting that filtered simplified icon of longing, washing it away into the inebriated panic of Norma Jean’s irredeemable condition. *Norma Jean spends almost three hours grasping at straws with the limited resources she has under brutal influence to figure out just what her 'true self' is, and the absence of substance discovered is the secret key to the whole puzzle. It's not a sled, but a not-sled, and it's the most honest place we could possibly arrive at to meet her where she's at.

None of this would be nearly as effectively if De Armas didn't give one of the best performances I've seen in... ever. Julianne Nicholson is the other standout player as Norma's unstable mother in the film's ruthless first act. It's one of the darkest sides of mental illness I've seen portrayed on screen, stirring us more caustically in mere minutes than most horror movie villains do across a feature length, and I hope she gets recognition for escaping into the role as bravely as she does here. I can understand why Netflix is burying this, why they wouldn't waste their money on a campaign. It's not a very marketable movie. It's incredibly artsy and intense and depressing. But, if anything, it's this neglect of such an important voice being heard that's alarming. Again, whether or not it's actually Monroe's voice hardly matters- but it's the voice of an oppressed woman's psychological state, translated in a hazy fog against the typical film grammar that's digestible to mass audiences looking to get vicarious catharsis out of her story. It's Truth, 24 times a second, for a lot of seconds. Such neglect is also very sad considering that every person working on this film deserves an Oscar, and no one more than De Armas. It's a fearless performance, a courageous part to take, and if there's any justice she'll take home the gold.

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun Sep 25, 2022 5:27 am This isn't just the greatest movie of the year, but the greatest biopic I've ever seen.

\:D/

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun Sep 25, 2022 5:27 am Spencer, this is not (it's actually a lot more like Desplechin's Tromperie than anything else I can think of offhand).

=;

Jokes aside, this made me even more excited for the film

I had a passing interest because of the director (TAoJJbtCRF), and I like period pieces, but my interest in both Monroe and biopics is fairly indifferent. Your review alone has made my interest in this skyrocket, thanks TWBB

My interest in Monroe and biopics is fairly indifferent as well. I'm a huge fan of Andrew Dominik's work, and am most definitely looking forward to it. But I have been waiting for someone on this forum to put their thoughts forward. It's not really that the review is making me 'more' excited, but I want to echo aox thoughts and say I really appreciate it. I've just been interested in hearing a point of view from someone checking it out as a work based on its merits rather than expectations or social critiques. I've been thinking about TWBB post since I read it earlier, and was surprised to see someone beat me to it in pointing out their appreciation. I mean, I understand the movie might not be great anyway, I still haven't seen it- but the review is absolutely refreshing.

I’ll just add that I don’t care about biopics or Monroe (is this feeding the point of the film?!) either, but even though this is very much ‘about’ Norma Jeane Mortenson‘s unique struggle, it’s also engaging with the audience on a broader level: using sensational interventions to explore the Pandora’s box of ubiquitous oppression sourced in the toxic relationship between internal and outside forces that irredeemably traumatizes our own self-actualization. I’m not the first person to draw a comparison to Lynch, but the places this ventures thematically and formally draw from the same well of psychosocial horror as late-period Lynch, and not in the same way that most ‘eccentric’ films are lazily labeled “Lynchian” without a thought to how or why. Which is all to say, at best, I expect Blonde to divide the forum

Oh, and I know it’s enticing to wait an easy three days to watch this on Netflix, but this film demands to be seen in a theatre if you’re able to do so

I was never expecting this to be a by-the-numbers biopic because a) it's based on a highly acclaimed Joyce Carol Oates novel, and b) isn't it largely fictional?

therewillbeblus wrote: Sun Sep 25, 2022 6:50 pm Oh, and I know it’s enticing to wait an easy three days to watch this on Netflix, but this film demands to be seen in a theatre if you’re able to do so

I haven't read the novel, don't have much of a relation to Monroe, and am not a large fan of Dominik's oeuvre, but this is my most anticipated film of the year. Largely because of the divisive response it's been getting — it just sounds so very daring and out there compared to other American prestige pictures (for lack of a better word). Your write-up only increased my anticipation further.

It's just a shame that Netflix's international theatre distribution sucks. You'd think that here, in a country where the new Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind documentary is playing nation-wide, they'd play Blonde on at least one screen. Oh well. Uncut Gems worked on the TV, so I'm hoping the same is true for this one.

I loved the sort of collective response to Killing Them Softly. Really ending up down the middle/low. Some love, some hate, some very middling. Many very middling perhaps. But the discourse around that and around this excites me greatly.

Funny enough, this last post from TWBB makes my excitement skyrocket more than the review. "Is this feeding the point of the film?!" I remember seeing the opening showtime of Jesse James in Lincoln Square AMC 2007 and 2 other people were there. One of them was someone I had seen on line a few times when waiting to get film tickets for NYFF at the box office, total coincidence, and he didn't like it. But Jesse James blew me away, and I felt a similar way afterward when he asked me my opinion- about how all criticism/compliments all really just fed into the ideas of the film anyway. (As the technical aspects were pretty on point by most peoples standards, at least.)

Wish quite seriously I could see this in theaters. Have been relegated to a place in the country where I'd have to travel too far to see it. I was in NYC just weeks ago, it kills me I couldn't hold out money-wise to get to see it. I was only 16 seeing Jesse James in theaters- and have seen Killing Them Softly, One More Time With Feeling, This Much I Know to Be True, and a revival of Chopper- and another screening of Jesse James w/ Dominik and David Chase in theaters. I hate this will be the one I don't get to see. Really kills me. I read someone say Knight of Cups meets Inland Empire in a sort of derogatory way somewhere- but honestly I'm a big fan of both of those, so I can't help but be excited.

Side note: I remember my girlfriend back in 2013 or 2014 talking to Andrew Dominik & David Chase outside of a theater, we had a conversation but she got to mention how excited she was for Blonde and he was gushing over that. We saw Joyce Carol Oates speak about a new book of hers two nights before/after that, by coincidence. I got to talk to Oates after that one and even asked about Blonde. It led to a long discussion of our favorite films. She loved Inside Llewyn Davis (she was talking to my girlfriend about it because I was the only one of us to have not seen it yet) and realllly loved The Great Beauty. We talked for a long time about it. (apologies for long aside, don't want to get too off topic, Edit: realized I mentioned part of this in earlier comment, sorry to repeat. Also apologies on english, its not my first language)

A different question I have for anyone who has seen it in theaters would be whether or not to watch with Netflix subtitles. I know this can only be determined by watching it the night of, unfortunately. But the comment about "this film demands to be seen in theatre" makes me think I'll have to avoid it on the first watch. Again: fun review to read; itching to see this movie like few others- can't wait! Also: I looked it up a few weeks ago not recently, but from what I looked up I didn't find more than 5 or so theaters showing Blonde in the entire country on September 16. I wonder if it has expanded. If anyone has any information, am very interested.

And by the way to swo: it's absolutely fictional. The screenplay by Dominik for Blonde has a page dedicated to stating: "What follows is fiction. Biographical facts should be sought elsewhere." I always thought that summed up the novel pretty well, figured I'd put it here. No idea if it's in the film. But judging by the response from most it seems like it's not.

swo17 wrote: Sun Sep 25, 2022 7:08 pm I was never expecting this to be a by-the-numbers biopic because a) it's based on a highly acclaimed Joyce Carol Oates novel, and b) isn't it largely fictional?

Yeah, the same people who were expecting The Social Network to be a faithful, intended biopic on Zuckerberg should run from this one, as it's just using the polar opposite approach (of sprawling subjectivity to Fincher's clinical objectivity) to draw on deeply-intwined experiential psychosocial themes the audience can engage with. Funny enough, both films feature tacit references to Citizen Kane's reveal in their final frames, though Blonde continues on to do something more perverse with it by destroying its value- not as a confident pronouncement but as a blurred surrender to meaninglessness- while The Social Network's ending is lucid (and I maintain that its entire body functions as a blatant recontextualization of the Welles). Anyways, Blonde should probably not otherwise be compared to The Social Network..

So apparently the most controversial thing in this NC-17 movie is that

Spoiler

at one point Marilyn Monroe's CGI fetus directly addresses the audience to praise Clarence Thomas' SCOTUS for finally overturning Roe v. Wade. OK, I made half of that up, but the Daily Beast called it "an abomination" so the two even out.

I thought this fell just a tad into biopic trappings (e.g. most everything involving Joe DiMaggio) but worked really well when it veered more into Lynchian horror. The film re-creations were also very nicely done.

J M Powell wrote: Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:53 pm De Armas does Monroe's husky voice but doesn't even try to adopt an American accent.

I felt like sometimes she lost the accent, and other times it was there but in a way that complemented Monroe's familiar cadences. Any actor taking on a role this familiar is facing an uphill battle, but I was able to suspend disbelief at least half the time, which probably qualifies the performance as a success.

The film's greatest sin is underutilizing Garret Dillahunt

swo17 wrote: Thu Sep 29, 2022 5:11 pm So apparently the most controversial thing in this NC-17 movie is that

Spoiler

at one point Marilyn Monroe's CGI fetus directly addresses the audience to praise Clarence Thomas' SCOTUS for finally overturning Roe v. Wade. OK, I made half of that up, but the Daily Beast called it "an abomination" so the two even out.

Spoiler

I didn't think the NC-17 rating was 'earned' either, but was probably sold by a) the artful shot of the scalpel cutting into a vagina from the inside's (fetus's?) pov during one of the abortions, and b) the protracted gaze on the JFK BJ

swo17 wrote: Thu Sep 29, 2022 5:11 pm

J M Powell wrote: Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:53 pm De Armas does Monroe's husky voice but doesn't even try to adopt an American accent.

I felt like sometimes she lost the accent, and other times it was there but in a way that complemented Monroe's familiar cadences. Any actor taking on a role this familiar is facing an uphill battle, but I was able to suspend disbelief at least half the time, which probably qualifies the performance as a success.

I thought she nailed it, but because the film is basically 'about' a woman putting on a persona of what she thinks America wants to mythologize on a superficial level, it worked so much better for me that a different accent would be detectable under the false soft sexy voice of the Monroe avatar. That element might've been lost if Naomi Watts, for example, had been cast, since her own non-Monroe 'natural' voice would be less pronounced. I 'get' that it would be more realistic since the sound wouldn't be Cuban, but with artificiality vs authenticity as nebulous to even the beholder as a core theme, it's a brilliant icing on the cake, intentional or otherwise (in part because, reflexively, Ana de Armas's intentionality or control over her own manipulation of voice is unknown and limited!)