Blonde (2022)

	Directed by: Andrew Dominik	COUNTRY USA GENRE Biographical NORWEGIAN TITLE Blonde RUNNING TIME 166 minutes
	Produced by: Brad Pitt Dede Gardner Jeremy Kleiner Tracey Landon Scott Robertson
	Screenwriter (based on the book by Joyce Carol Oates): Andrew Dominik

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Norma Jeane Mortenson / Marilyn Monroe	Ana de Armas
The Playwright (Arthur Miller)	Adrien Brody
Ex-Athlete (Joe DiMaggio)	Bobby Cannavale	½
Cass Chaplin	Xavier Samuel
Gladys Pearl Baker	Julianne Nicholson
Edward G. Robinson Jr.	Evan Williams
Whitey	Toby Huss	-
Mr. Z (Darryl F. Zanuck)	David Warshofsky	-
The President (John F. Kennedy)	Caspar Phillipson	-
I.E. Shinn	Dan Butler	-
Miss Flynn	Sara Paxton	-
Young Norma Jeane	Lily Fisher

Review

Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik (The Assasination of Jesse James) started developing this movie way back in 2010, and his passion for the project is palpable. It has become a visionary film – a triumph in aesthetics and temperament. We follow Norma Jeane Mortenson, aka Marilyn Monroe, through her rollercoaster life in a male-dominated world of show business, in which the perpetually immature but ambitious Monroe encounter as many sorrows as successes. The film is based on the 2000 novel by Joyce Carol Oates and is a fictionalized version of Monroe's life, with Oates filling in the blanks on how the starlet's relationships and moods could have been. You can watch Blonde with the eyes of a fact-checker, or you can watch it as it was intended by Dominik – as an artistic expression and rendition of one of the most mythical figures in Hollywood history. Granted, it's a tough watch with plenty of gloom, and one could make a claim that Dominik is constantly in danger of playing into the hyperbole about Monroe. But the film also is filled with beautiful, weighty moments which balance it all, such as the love triangle between Monroe, Cass Chaplin and Eddy Robinson, or the scene in which she first meets The Playwright (Arthur Miller, sensitively played by Adrien Brody) and the two realize their special tenderness for each other. This is a film that will stand the test of time a lot better than its detractors will.