But to deny Monroe most, if not all, of her joy, her wit, her strength-not to mention the scraps of autonomy she wrested out of a white-knuckled industry-is an offense to Monroe and to the woman playing her. The Gentlemen Prefer Blondes star’s story is uniquely, oppressively sad-many of the most widely recognized portions of her biography are painful-and to ignore this in a film would be similarly negligent. True, to deny that Monroe was a tragic figure would be to conjure another fiction. Blonde’s status as fiction, by that measure, necessitates wild deviations and omissions from Monroe’s real life: The film includes multiple graphic scenes of rape, abortion, and oral sex CGI close-ups of a talking fetus and a cervix pulled open via speculum the gurgling sounds of a young girl nearly drowned in a bathtub and the inclusion of the words “baby,” “daddy,” and “slut” in claustrophobic proximity. Instead it evokes the shroud of a tall tale, in order to justify whatever choices Dominik deemed appropriate for a singular interpretation of a singular star. The film, based on a very-much-fictional novel by Joyce Carol Oates, does not purport to be a biopic. This is where the defense of Blonde as a “fictionalization” of Monroe’s life falls apart. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play
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