An often difficult watch that is, at best, your cup of tea directorially or not - or at worst, a disgraceful smearing of an icon for the sake of supposed high-brow art.

I lean more to the latter. I'll explain.

Let's put aside the fact it depicts someone who actually lived...

- opaque timeline.
- hokey dialogue.
- overly long yet light on reality.
- over simplistic depiction of a woman who is struggling with several issues.

Now let's add in that it is someone who actually lived.

-unconvincing casting. Ana De Armas is a fine actress, one of the absolute best working today. But two issues here - likeness, not great. Accent - lifts you out of her performance.
- why besmirch her memory with an unfounded threesome... Or belittle her with sexual acts. That they occurred there is no doubt but it only makes her out to be cheap to show them whereas the men involved get away with the depiction almost scot-free.

It's almost unwatchable. I wanted to switch off within 20 minutes but persevered due to opinions from other viewers I highly respect. It just didn't come to life for me - but more so, I didn't get much of the tension or societal commentary that other reviews are pointing to so vehemently.

I just found it underwhelming, poorly constructed and a difficult viewing out of being non-plussed. And Norma Jeane deserved a lot more than that.

Whereas Elvis was a mess for totally different reasons, I'd have to say it is slightly superior to this one in relative terms.

The true irony will be that the Oscars are dominated by both films. Films about people from its own industry that were killed by their own successes and then were 'honored by biopics' in extremely poorly taste.


4/10

Gorgeous cinematography and color grading, and creative use of aspect ratio changes; inspired score; and phenomenal acting (especially of note is the child playing young Norma Jean-- both she and the mother were frighteningly convincing.)

This film is much more a mythologized psychological head trip art house drama than biopic, so if you're confused by what I just said, you're probably too simple to appreciate any of the aforementioned, so you can leave your low ratings somewhere else that deserves it... like most of the rest of Netflix's catalogue. I can't imagine the film being any shorter, especially given how it already uses its time skips-- always from Norma's perspective. That was the one consistent thread throughout the film. You experience everything from her disturbed perspective. Whenever Ana turns directly to the camera, it's Norma _watching_ Marilyn act. The dialog can be a little hokey at times, but that's my only real gripe from a cinematic standpoint.

However, if you're an avid fan of Marilyn and know her true story well, then this will probably make you mad. I knew just enough getting into this that everything seemed plausible (I knew the deal with Di Maggio, and with Arthur Miller), but mainly I appreciated it for the experience that it was. But I can certainly understand what people might have against it on those grounds.

And a note about the nudity: I didn't find any of it to be titillating, or exploitive. Yes, Ana de Armas is gorgeous, and normally I'd be lusting after her onscreen form, but Norma Jean's story was too tragic, and I felt too much for the character and what she was going through. A large theme in the film (though not spelled out explicitly, for those who've never thought about or are naïve to the cultural context) is that of the hypocritical puritanical obsession with sex, and how Abrahamics/Christians/Westerners/Americans demonize women for having sexuality, while simultaneously commoditizing, marketing, and lusting after them. The irony is that she's hypersexualized as Marylin, while _clothed_, but the scenes with nudity are Norma's lived experiences, and are anything but.

No wonder Marilyn Monroe overdosed on sleeping pills, I was suicidal well before this movie finished!!
This movie is so depressing that it is hard to watch. I had to jump through numerous parts desperately looking for something even slightly uplifting. I failed.

'Blonde' is a strange one.

There is nothing about it that I'd scream from the rooftops about, yet the heavy run time of around 2hrs 47mins went by in an absolute flash - not once was I bored with what I was watching; I tend to check how long is left of a movie when I'm finding it dull, but with this I didn't check at all - as clear a sign as any that I obviously enjoyed it.

I'm not fully convinced why, admittedly. I think it's just really interesting to watch from start-to-finish, the acting is very good and the film is put together well. I wasn't sure about having Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe during the first few scenes, though I quickly lost those thoughts as she gives a great performance.

I get the criticisms (though how many biopics truly stick to reality?) but I predominantly judge films as films, and this is a very watchable one in my books. I'm not saying it's anything special, though for a near 3hr flick to fly by it evidently gave me what I require.

In the middle of 2022, the movie I was looking forward to the most was '**Blonde**', but... I'm really disappointed.

The film has nowhere to hold on, it's just a fictional compilation of the supposed life of **Marilyn Monroe**, where we don't get context and it's easy to get lost through the scenes and the large number of characters (_which if you didn't know the story, you wouldn't really know who they are_) of a feature film of almost three hours. The direction is good, although quite experimental where sometimes elements that seem to come out of nowhere are combined. Not to mention the constant switching between color and black/white that doesn't seem to represent anything concrete.

**Ana de Armas's** performance is brilliant, by far the best of the film, despite how poor her character is.

I'm really disappointed, in these times we live in, designing a movie about **Marilyn Monroe** could have contained a much more powerful message. The story of a woman who went through the sexualization of the industry in the 50's. Instead the film only seems to add fuel to the fire by showing nudity at any time and sometimes for no reason.

Based on a story in parts fictitious, with a vision, in my opinion, poorly focused, they make 'Blonde' a great disappointment.