Things are not always what they seem. “Blond”, this film captivated me. It’ s unbelievable what Andrew Dominik has achieved and how deeply he was able to get into the psychological problems of Marylin Monroe. How intensely, sensitively and thrillingly Ana de Armas embodies Marylin.
The interaction of music and noises, editing and cinematography, sometimes in black and white, sometimes in color, and the overdrawing of the situation, give you goose bumps. When I watch this film, I can feel her. I become her. And in fact, I can find myself in her. As, sadly, many women do.
Due to her very tough childhood, Marylin, or rather Norma-Jean, was able to empathize in acting lofty roles, but this was not at all appreciated in Hollywood. They wanted to see her exclusively in roles where she played a dumb and sexy vamp. Andrew Dominik shows in this and many other scenes, very strikingly, that she was not understood. That no one made the effort to understand her. The world only saw an object. According to me, Andrew Dominik and Ana de Armas managed to do just that. He succeeded in the balancing act between portraying her strong psychological problems and the nasty treatment by men and the film industry and bridged the gap to her high acting talent and her fine and intellectual mind.
In another scene, she is shown in the kitchen of her first husband’s family. Because of her history, with a sojourn of over two years in a orphanage, passing through her family and the many sexual assaults against her, she is insecure and she is also unable to cook. However, she tries to be polite in order to ” feel like she belongs.” She does not succeed at all because of her awkward appearance. Helplessly, she tries to do everything right, but by doing so, she puts herself in an almost clumsy situation. She is under extreme stress because of the situation and the strangers, everything just rushes and she seems really insane. I know such situations too well.
I also feel that the fact that she doesn’t know how high her sexual appeal is, is portrayed tremendously well. Women with this background, women who have had to have sexual experiences with men far too early in their childhood, often actually don’t know this. This is also something I know from my own history. Norma-Jean works as a pin-up model at an early age, but she is not at all aware of her sexual appeal. Only her two lovers show her that she is beautiful. And even this, obviously, is not enough for her to internalize. Such women follow what is shown to them, but do not sense this. They are disconnected from themselves. They cannot evaluate themselves; they have a completely distorted image of themselves.
I also find extremely explanatory the sentence Marylin says about herself, “Norma-Jean is just a vessel.” When you have grown up so much, looking for love and wanting to please because the longing for love is almost unbearable, you stop feeling like yourself. Then one becomes a vessel of others’ feelings, to be like them, to feel like them, to be loved by them. To my mind, a brilliant, highly sensitive and profound film and masterpiece.
Blond – long live the woman. Viva la Vulva!
