Marilyn Monroe came from a tough childhood. She grew up with an alcoholic mentally unstable mother and a father who left because he didn’t want her. She spent most of her early life neglected. And that neglection carried her throughout her life. On screen, she was Hollywood’s sex symbol. The type of woman every man wanted. But not Many people seemed to see her beyond her looks. Even her husbands & lovers only would care about her through the sex and neglect her beyond that. Yes BLONDE is exploitive and graphic, but I think it intentionally tries to show how most men saw Marilyn Monroe as a “sex object” rather than a person. I feel like director Andrew Dominik misses the mark at times when he tries to capture that. He gets too caught up in the male gaze that he forgets to showcase the inner life of who Marilyn Monroe truly was.

Ana de Armas does a better job than I was expecting as Marilyn. Marilyn Monroe is such a complicated person to portray, and de Armas clearly does her best at trying to grasp the many layers of Monroe. There are certain angles where she looks almost identical to Marilyn. She must’ve been emotional exhausted by the end of filming this movie by how much crying she does. 

I’m keep going back and forth with how I feel about this movie. There were moments I loved and other parts I felt unnecessary or hated. Most of what I disliked I think fell at the hands of the director who tries to be too ambitious in being stylistic. The movie had an opportunity of being great but falls a little short, at its own fault. I wish they showcased the movie more as a lonely Hollywood star searching for her self worth rather than a Hollywood sex symbol who gives in to men’s temptations as a way to hide from her insecurities.