Her mother named her Morna Jeane after Norma Talmadge and Jean Harlow. She was destined to be a star. And she was. But she suffered many absences before she arrived and she never achieved happiness when she was at the top. Marilyn Monroe is one of the great myths of the 20th century. Andy Warhol turned it into art. Joyce Carol Oates made literature with her. And now Andrew Dominik has taken it to the movies.
Blonde , the long-awaited Netfilx biopic about Marilyn Monroe, premiered today in the official section of the Venice Film Festival where it competes for the Golden Lion. The film, almost three hours long, had an irregular reception, but there was unanimity among the press who attended the first pass on its protagonist, Ana de Armas: “It’s sensational.”
“Superb, fantastic, wonderful…” De Armas’ performance was convincing and the actress met the criticism of her Spanish accent at a press conference after the screening of the film: “I didn’t make this film so that the people change their minds about me, “said the actress. Why has she then agreed to give life to the quintessential erotic myth of the 20th century?
“We wanted to show the real woman under the character of Marilyn. It was about understanding, empathizing and connecting with her, with her pain and her trauma,” said De Armas, who is now 34 years old, just two years younger than Monroe was when she died of a barbiturate overdose on August 4, 1962. to go on to swell the list of contemporary myths.
Dominik rejected from the outset shooting a biopic to use and chose to adapt Oates’s novel, Blonde , “a life radically distilled in the form of fiction”, according to the author, who has applauded the film adaptation, in the prologue of the book published in 1999. Blonde is just that, a fiction born from the writer’s imagination based on a real character.
But if it is not reality, at least it has a lot of plausibility. Morna Jeane was a helpless girl. In the early years she was raised by her maternal grandmother, Della, but when the woman passed away, the little girl went to live with her mother, who worked developing films at a large Hollywood studio. The chemicals that she used in her work harmed her health. The alcohol and drugs she used impaired her consciousness. Morna Jeane’s mother, played by actress Julianne Nicholson, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and her daughter ended up in an orphanage and various foster homes.
“The opening scenes of the film were shot in the same apartment where Marilyn, then called Norma Jeane Baker, had lived with her mentally ill mother,” Dominik explained during the press conference. “It was like a seance,” added the director, who was seconded by De Armas: “Marilyn was among us. It may sound very mystical, but it is true. We all feel it, sometimes she was happy and other times she would get angry and throw things against the wall.”
Ana de Armas knew very little about Marilyn Monroe when she accepted the role. Like most of the public, she has seen her movies or listened to her songs and little else. But behind the myth of Marilyn hides a difficult life, which the Cuban actress discovered as she immersed herself in the character and which viewers will learn about during the two hours and 42 minute footage of Blonde , which will be released in traditional theaters next September 16 and on Netflix on the 28th.
Blonde is an opportunity to discover the backstage of the Marilyn myth and also an opportunity for De Armas who, since yesterday, has been running as a firm candidate to steal the Coppa Volpi for best female performance in this Mostra from Cate Blanchett, until now favorite by her portrayal of a famous female conductor who harasses her female conservatory students in Todd Field’s Tár.
Not only the critics and the specialized press have been full of praise for De Armas’ performance, but also her co-star, Adrien Brody, who plays Arthur Miller, one of Monroe’s husbands, applauded the actress’s work: “The On the first day of filming, I went home with a sense of awe that I had the privilege of working with Marilyn Monroe.”
After this first screening of Blonde, part of the controversy surrounding the film has been left behind. The film still has an NC-17 rating in the United States, which prevents anyone under 17 from viewing it, but De Armas’s Cuban accent is no longer a problem. “I am still Latina, but for me it is important to show that your ethnicity does not mean a limitation, it does not mean that you are not capable of interpreting wonderful characters from anywhere,” De Armas settled after the applause received.
