Starting off I can 100% say no movie has ever sickened me as much as this one, even though it wasn’t a gory murder movie or anything like that, I was still sickened by it. After watching this I felt as though it is almost seen as a joke to be a woman who has dreams. Or even to be a woman in general. When this movie was first announced, I thought it was going to finally show the side of Marilyn that the public never saw. I thought we were going to see her dreams and what she loved in life and how great of a person she was, instead it ridiculed her dreams and exploited her even more.

Going into the movie I thought I would be able to see her happiest moments, but the events that took place throughout the movie were ones that actually traumatized her. The only reason why I am giving this movie one star is solely because of Ana De Armas’ insane portrayal of Marilyn Monroe, her awful accent took off another star, but other than that she gave me goosebumps. Throughout the almost three hour long movie the picture changes from black and white to color, although director Andrew Dominik in an interview said the color pallette has “no real story sense,” but I believe it does.

From the start of the movie, we are introduced to Norma Jean, the real Marilyn. The movie opens with one of the most iconic scenes of Marilyn ever, her dress flying up in The Seven Year Itch. Which right off the bat, the movie is already sexualizing Marilyn instead of sympathizing with her. The movie title “Blonde” appears and soon turns to fire from the fire in The Hollywood Hills. We find out early on that Marilyn had an absent father and her mother was emotionally and physically abusive. We watch young Norma get into a car with her mother and try to drive into the fire of hollywood hills which her mother claimed her father would be there-- this didn’t actually happen in real life. This whole scene was in black and white and I believe the fire of hollywood hills in the blonde title could be seen as how toxic Hollywood is and how it basically set Marilyn’s own life on fire.

The film changes to color when Norma gets taken away from her Mother and moves in with her neighbors, then black and white again when she is put into an orphanage. Whenever she is filming, the movie is in black and white, but when she is actually truly acting like she wants to, the film changes to color. Throughout her life, Norma clung onto the hope of finding her father. Norma Jean is the real woman she wants to be while Marilyn is the woman the public wants to see. When Norma was more Marilyn, the girl she showed to the public, the film would turn to black and white. She was in her darkest moments then. When she finally had a glimpse of hope, like when she would meet a new man who could be sort of a father figure to her, the film turned to color.

The NC-17 rating was originally very controversial to the critics and the crowd, and I could immediately see why. First off, there is extreme nudity. It felt as though they were eroticizing Ana just as they were with Marilyn. There is a graphic rape scene which may be triggering to many people and multiple scenes where Marilyn is taken advantage of. There is also a graphic abortion scene. At first I thought it was odd that it would be rated NC-17, but it definitely makes sense why. It also felt as though the movie never even started and it was just showing random chunks of her life, it got very confusing. Although the film “fictionalized” moments of her life it included real moments from her life that they turned into even more traumatic events. Instead of trying to show her at her happiest, and at the good points of her life, they decided to show the audience the most awful moments in her life.

Throughout the movie, there are moments when men in Norma’s life question how smart she is. For example, when she tries out to be Magda in her future husband Arthur Miller’s play, she makes an analysis of Magda and Arthur thinks someone else told her that, because he doesn’t believe she came up with it on her own. When Marilyn has a miscarriage, it goes into her singing “I Wanna Be Loved by You” and she has a rageful breakdown. In another scene, she is upset during her movie premiere instead of happy. Marilyn was actually very smart and just wanted to act. She wanted to understand the characters she was playing and become them. Instead, she was cast for the male eye in almost all of her roles, which was never what she wanted. This movie made it seem as though she was crazy, when she wasn’t she was just like any other girl who had a dream and just wanted a man to love her.

I would never watch this movie again and I’m mad that it was made. 60 years after her death Marilyn is still being mocked instead of being rightfully remembered. I thought this movie would show everyone how human she really was and how she wasn’t a toy, but it didn’t. If she were somehow still alive today, I would hope that everyone who wronged her in the past would offer her their most heartfelt apology.