Gee, I wonder why Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde” was much better received in Europe than it was in the U.S. Maybe it’s because we’ve turned into a nation of total prudes, one that now even has “trigger” warnings before some movies at film festivals.
Most well-renowned filmmakers know this. They just can’t say it. In a new interview, Ana De Armas was asked about the hostile reception “Blonde” received in the US and she does make the comparison between the Venice/San Sebastien screenings and the critical drilling Stateside.
When we premiered the movie in Venice, or San Sebastián, the reaction was much warmer than the reception was in the U.S.. Of course, the reaction that gets the most attention is the one in the U.S., but that wasn’t the whole experience. It’s hard to hear these reactions, but you can always go back to what you experienced, and why you did it, and the reasons why you were attracted to the project. That is not going to change. You have the director, and you have other actors that you can always talk to. As hard as it is to hear when people don’t like your film, it is what it is. It was not a movie that was made to please people or to make people like it. It is a hard movie to watch.
I don’t think the movie speaks badly about her a bit. I think it’s the opposite. I think it speaks badly about the environment and the industry, and that’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes for other people in the business. I feel like the movie also makes the audience feel like participants. We contributed at the time, and we still contribute, in the exploitation of actors, people in the public eye. We, the audience, do this. And I feel like it’s possible that some people have felt like [someone] pointed a finger at [them].
The fact that it was Marilyn Monroe depicted on-screen brought in a hefty amount of bait for people who couldn’t take it that a white male director would tackle such a fervent cinematic icon, and in such a sexual way. To the point where Dominik was accused of misogyny and exploitation.
Speaking at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia [via THR], Dominik sharpened his knives for U.S. critics, who had the strongest reaction to the film — “they hated the movie!” — and said its negative reaction was purely based Americans these days only wanting an empowered woman on-screen.
“Now we’re living in a time where it’s important to present women as empowered, and they want to reinvent Marilyn Monroe as an empowered woman. That’s what they want to see,” he said. “And if you’re not showing them that, it upsets them.”
Dominik added that nowadays American movies are “more conservative,” like a bedtime story where people already know every word and anything different would cause a reaction. “But I don’t want to make bedtime stories.”
Monroe is depicted as a supreme martyr of the 20th-century. It’s basically “The Passion of the Christ,” but with Monroe replacing Jesus. She just gets physically and mentally tortured throughout. Dominik greased his Gibson fumes here.
It’s a movie that tries to capture who Monroe actually was. That’s what I liked about “Blonde.” It’s probably the best account of what was truly occurring inside Monroe’s head. Other depictions have failed in their attempts to convey the inner torture, the demons inside her psyche. It’s torturous psychodrama.
Brady Corbet's “The Origin of the World,” his X-Rated epic about "Northern California’s economy" in the 1970s epic, has now started production in South Africa under the working title “SALT FLATS.”