After just one day of being available to stream, Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde,” which stars Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, shot to the top of Netflix’s movie chart. The NC-17 controversy, though, is disturbing a lot of consumers. Although the movie received a 14-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, reviewers and moviegoers are labeling it “sexist,” “cruel,” and “one of the most repulsive movies” ever created.
In her review of “Blonde,” Manohla Dargis, a film critic for The New York Times, said: “Given all the humiliations and horrors that Marilyn Monroe went through in her 36 years, it is a comfort that she was spared the vulgarities of “Blonde,” the latest necrophiliac amusement to take advantage of her.”
The movie “Blonde,” which was partially adapted from the Joyce Carol Oates book of the same name, depicts the numerous heartbreaks and tragedies in Marilyn Monroe’s life and career, from her, being subjected by her strict mother to several Hollywood sexual assaults. Although everyone loved Ana de Armas’ performance, the film itself caused controversy due to Monroe’s ongoing harassment, abuse, and traumatization.
I had the terrible misfortune of seeing ‘Blonde’ on Netflix last night, and let me tell you the movie is so anti-abortion, so sexist, so exploitative,’ said abortion specialist Steph Herold of the University of California, San Francisco. I can’t recommend it any less. Don’t look on. The abortion sequences in particular are the worst in the entire film, which is dreadful.
It depicts Marilyn being forced to undergo her first abortion, crying on the table that she has changed her mind and then having a hallucination that she discovers a weeping infant in her burning childhood home, according to Herold.
The Los Angeles Times’ Justin Chang noted in his review that the movie isn’t actually about Marilyn Monroe. Her suffering is the intended result.
According to Adam Nayman, a cinema essayist and reviewer for The Ringer, “when a movie is genuinely shattering or terrible, there’s a lingering sense of thankfulness for what you’ve gone through the need of being rocked.” “‘Blonde’ is the sort of film that tortures you for three hours before pretending to sigh and saying, ‘You’re welcome.’ Thanks, but no thanks.
One viewer wrote on Twitter that Marilyn, Norma is “put in a cage that only allows her to be abused, sexualized, or to call others daddy.” She added, “Maybe we stop letting chauvinist males try to produce innovative films about women of which they know nothing.”
Netflix is now streaming “Blonde.”