September 30, 2022

"I think that since it’s told in this first-person perspective, it works somehow for the film to be a traumatic experience."

"Because you’re inside of her – her journey and her longings and her isolation – amidst all of this adulation... [W]hether it’s an extreme depiction or not – it’s honoring the extreme chasm between the public’s perception of the fame and the glory of Hollywood’s most famous, iconic actor, and the reality of that individual – the loneliness and emptiness and mental turmoil and abuse of that individual."

Said Adrien Brody, who plays Arthur Miller in the new Netflix movie about Marilyn Monroe.

Quoted in "Adrien Brody says ‘Blonde’ is ‘fearless filmmaking,’ meant to be a ‘traumatic experience’" (NY Post).

I wonder how Arthur Miller is depicted. 

38 comments:

n.n said...

A traumatic experience, a human experience. TGIF

Steve said...

From what I have read about Arthur Miller, he deserves everything he might get.

JAORE said...

A traumatic event you say?

Just what I've been looking for.

Krumhorn said...

I wonder how Arthur Miller is depicted

Probably, inside her.

- Krumhorn

JAORE said...

"... she visited Monroe’s grave in Los Angeles to ask for her permission."

That seals the deal for me.

But what if Ms. Monroe had said, "No."?

Kay said...

I’ve been reading a lot of bad press about this film, including an interview where the director, among other things, admits he is totally unfamiliar with any of Marylin Monroe’s movies.

Sebastian said...

Heads up: based on a book by Joyce Carol Oates.

You've been warned.

Jupiter said...

"I wonder how Arthur Miller is depicted."

The circumstance "how Arthur Miller is depicted" is an attribute of the movie, and therefore of the people who filmed and edited the movie. Why are you curious about the people who filmed and edited this movie? Or any movie, for that matter.

Big Mike said...

Who plays Jack Kennedy? Who plays his brother Bobby?

Ceciliahere said...

I started to read the Joyce Carol Oates book but found it too disturbing. So I didn’t finish it. I started watching the film, Blonde, and found it even more disturbing. But, this was Marilyn’s life (according to JCO) and it was a sad life. She was an abused child and grew to be a woman who was again abused. However, the acting in the movie (what I saw) was excellent. Ana de Armas should definitely win an award for her role. IMHO

Kay said...

Big Mike said...
Who plays Jack Kennedy? Who plays his brother Bobby?
9/30/22, 9:35 AM


Caspar Phillipson is the actor and apparently he often lands the JFK role in movies because he looks just like him. I don’t think Bobby is in it?

Joe Smith said...

I have never understood the Marilyn Monroe mystique.

She was a second-rate actor, and I see more beautiful women every day at the coffee shop.

Kate said...

I came here to complain about a man director "getting inside" of Marilyn. Then I see Kay's comment that this guy doesn't know her films.

GTFOH

Joe Smith said...

'Who plays Jack Kennedy? Who plays his brother Bobby?'

Who plays Joltin' Joe?

Dustbunny said...

Miller is portrayed much more sympathetically than Joe DiMaggio who, in this film, is an ignorant brute. I’m watching it in sections as it is rather overwhelming. It is definitely not woke.

Howard said...

Joe: Marilyn appeals mostly to straight men, so that might explain why she doesn't have it for you and your fetish for Bay Area coffee shop clipped hair mean faced feminazis.

tim maguire said...

If the audience doesn't like it, it doesn't matter how passionately you argue that they should.

rcocean said...

Fearless = bad sign.

marilyn monroe was mentally ill. It was probably genetic, since her mother ended up in a looney bin. It got worse as she got older. Sadly, she was taken advantage of by a lot of people. Also sad, she had to fight her way to stardom, when she easily could have become a star in the late 40s when she was healthier.

Arthur Miller will probably be portrayed as a noble character, despite not being that. At all.

Tom T. said...

Marilyn appeals mostly to straight men

I'm not sure that's true anymore; I think she's become as much a gay icon as anything else. Think of Elton John and "Candle In The Wind."

The Washington Post gave the movie one star and called it "ghoulish."

Lurker21 said...

I would rather watch "Bombshell," TV's fictional Marilyn musical. NBC owes it to me after all the hours I wasted watching "Smash," the fictional TV show about the fictional musical.

Marilyn is a minefield. As with Princess Diana, whatever you say about Marilyn is bound to be wrong or insensitive or offend somebody. Come to think of it Joyce Carol Oates, the author of "Blonde," has little in common with Marilyn or Diana, but she's also a difficult topic. Is she -- can she -- be any good? Can you write that much and still have anything to say, especially in today's world?

Dagwood said...

Yawn. Howard is projecting again.

CJinPA said...

I wonder how Arthur Miller is depicted.

As a football player. It's a HORRIBLY researched film.

rhhardin said...

I've been rejecting almost everything on Amazon Prime Video for a while now. Even with interesting plot summaries one of the characters always has a psychological problem that promises hours of bad acting. Alcohol, memory loss, etc. The iconic form was some 50s TV episode that involved a wounded actor crawling up many many flights of stairs in pain, always the same set flight, for a half hour. It must be a genre with an internal name.

Carol said...

"Heads up: based on a book by Joyce Carol Oates."

She redeems herself with "Black Water."

Now that's a movie that should have been made...the Mary Jo Kopechne POV.

Joe Smith said...

'Yawn. Howard is projecting again.'

The left is so tolerant...

William said...

The movie is rated NSFW and has lots of nudity. I'll definitely see it. It doesn't have to be accurate, just salacious. To be true to the legend, it should be salacious.... Marilyn nowadays is mostly a mythic character. She's been played by a lot of actors. Marilyn created the role, but she didn't have sufficient range to express the tragic undertones. Barbra Streisand was better at being Fanny Brice than Fanny Brice. As in life, Marilyn has not yet found fulfillment in the fictions about her life and in the actors who portray her.....I read the Richard Ben Cramer biography of Joe Dimaggio. He did hit her, but she cheated on him during their honeymoon and pulled godawful ball-breaking stunts.....I got the impression that on balance, Marilyn came out ahead in their relationship. She didn't come out ahead in most of her other relationships. Some of those exploitative relations were with people who had a professional burden of care. Her acting coaches and psychiatrist took shameful advantage of her, but compared to Kennedy, Miller and Dimaggio that's not the stuff of legend.

Readering said...

I watched the first five minutes. I think it will take many stops and starts to get through it.

William said...

Cleopatra only had two mythic lovers: Caesar and Marc Anthony. Marilyn had Joe Dimaggio, JFK and his brother, and Arthur Miller: the preeminent athlete, politicians, and dramatist of their generation. Marilyn deserves her mythic status. Maybe someday she'll get the drama that her myth deserves.... Arthur Miller didn't do right in his roles for or about her. She's definitely not an Arthur Miller character. Attention was paid to her. William Inge gave her her best role in Bus Stop, but her life behind the camera had far more drama, melodrama, and tragedy than any role she ever played before it....She continues to excite the imagination of creative people. Maybe someday she'll hit it lucky, but nothing great so far. On the plus side, most of the movies about her feature a lot of nudity.

Heartless Aztec said...

She dated the famous surfer Tommy Zahn in the late 40's. He broke up with Darilynn Zanuck to date Marilyn. I've seen a number of old photos of Marilyn and Tommy sitting around the "Pit" campfire at Malibu with the entire crew back when there were only several hundred surfers in the entire world. Peter Lawford was one of the crew. In interviews Tommy said Marilyn was very athletic riding tandem on his shoulders at Malibu. This would be the late 40's - about 10 years before Kathy "Gidget" Kohner. Anyways Daryl Zanuck fired Tommy from his acting contract when his daughter ratted him out to her daddy. He didn't fire Marilyn though...

n.n said...

Mary Jo Kopechne POV

I can't hear him roar. He's left me behind.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"I have never understood the Marilyn Monroe mystique.

She was a second-rate actor, and I see more beautiful women every day at the coffee shop."

Ditto. I don't get it. Compared to a Lauren Bacall or Grace Kelly she's wholly unexceptional.
But so much of what's hyped and fetishized, then and now, is wholly unexceptional.

Kai Akker said...

--- admits he is totally unfamiliar with any of Marylin Monroe’s movies. [Kay]

Director is from New Zealand originally. How could a New Zealander who is unfamiliar with her movies think he could do a good job, even working from some (cockamamie) Joyce Carol Oates script?

Kay, isn't the first thing you'd do be watch all her major roles? There aren't many!!!

Maybe the guy is fabricating for some kind of effect. But why do I doubt that? Only Hollywood could consider ignorance of your subject a virtue not needing correction.

Lurker21 said...

If there hadn't been a Marilyn, somebody would have had to invent one, but the invented Marilyn still wouldn't be as compelling as the real one. Why compelling? Because of the mythic elements -- ambition, helplessness, vulnerability, victimhood, tragic fate -- we find in her or attach to her story. In that, she's like JFK. The myth or the legend is more compelling than the real Kennedy actually was.

If Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn had died young, they might have been a match for Marilyn. Edie Sedgwick, who wasn't very remarkable, did manage to achieve mythic status by looking pretty and dying young. Judy Garland became something of a myth by dying in middle age. She's similar to, but also different from, Marilyn. Lauren Bacall? I don't see it. No match for Garbo or Bergman. Bacall was married to a legend, not one herself.

Frank Sinatra may have been another mythic lover of Monroe, but he was smart enough or stupid enough to make Ava Gardner his mad, mythic, consuming love.

Lucien said...

She’s been dead sixty years and they still want me to care. Almost as bad as Dylan, but at least he’s alive.

Baceseras said...

Lurker21 said: "Bacall was married to a legend, not one herself." Opinions vary.

Lurker21 said...

Not everybody who had a Blackglama ad is actually a legend.

Baceseras said...

Wow, they really ran that campaign into the ground.

Robert Cook said...

"If there hadn't been a Marilyn, somebody would have had to invent one...."

Someone did: Jayne Mansfield...and other, lesser iterations.