NC-17 | 2h 46m | Drama | September 28, 2022 Cuban-Spanish actress Ana de Armas learned English in four months. She also demonstrates in “Blonde” (about the life and times of Marilyn Monroe) what being a world-class actress means. It’s a virtuoso performance.
The film itself, directed by Andrew Dominik, is likewise a virtuoso cinematic offering but nonetheless fails as a film. Maybe it fails, and maybe it doesn’t; I’ll get to that later. Regardless, while it might fall into the category of entertainment, it’s anything but entertaining—it’s brutal and seriously depressing.
Adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’s novel of the same name (a work of fiction), the real and the imagined intermingle, which of course begs the question—is a filmmaker morally bound to honor the legacy of a historical figure on screen? What if the portrayed events are fictional? And, like the filmmakers who make films of writers’ works, don’t the writers need to ask themselves the same question, in the first place?…