On: Blonde

Monday is movies. Sometimes TV. Today it’s a turkey, for which no thanks can be given.

Anyone following me here, or anywhere else where I’ve written about film might already know that the one thing I love as much as a really good movie is a really bad movie. But it has to be bad on purpose.

I’m currently reading The Bad Movie Bible – and though I was at first dismayed that I hadn’t actually seen that many, on a second pass through the book I was filled with new hope at all the ‘fresh’ titles I would be able to get to.

Plus, as I mentioned – in praise of Tubi – I am working through a lot of good and very bad movies; some that never make the lists and books, but probably deserve to.

But, there’s something special about a really bad movie. Something like ‘The Room’ achieves its status not just because it’s a failure, but because it was maybe trying to be more than it could ever be, it was a confusing mess but it was trying…there’s some weird hope attached to it.

A plain old not-good movie, as opposed to a fun ‘bad’ film, is such a bloody chore.

Have you waded through a bad movie that feels like a wet week? It is the pits. I am getting better at just walking away, with so much choice at my fingertips I am finally okay with not seeing everything, and therefore not bothering to see some things through. But sometimes, sometimes, there’s a film that I just have to cut up into pieces and watch bit by excruciating bit.

I find, only after of course, that it is almost never worth it.

I didn’t think I’d find something worse than Netflix’s Diana: The Musical. I started watching that sometime a few months ago and I think it maybe took me several weeks to complete. I was watching it in excruciating five-minute segments. A new song or set-piece and I would make it through that then cancel out of it to watch anything else. But it was a badge of honour earned – I made it.

I sometimes talk about that end scene in The Shawshank Redemption. Andy Dufresne finally free after wading through that river of shit. That’s the perfect metaphor for a bad movie experience. You taste the freedom, but still have the residue of  all that shit you had to munch past.

Well, I think the new worst thing I’ll ever see is another Netflix film. Their ropey-as-hell disaster of a movie: Blonde.

Blonde is not the story of Marilyn Monroe. It is instead the story of a confused filmmaker hoping to stretch out torture-porn to its three-hour nadir, and sadly failing, coming in a little short at around two hours and forty-five minutes.

Blonde is based on a book by Joyce Carol Oates. And though I will never read her 700 page novel about the life of Marilyn Monroe (not a biography) I certainly don’t think Joyce Carol Oates is a bad writer. I’ve enjoyed many of her short stories, she’s won multiple awards, is revered in literary circle and her book, Blonde, was in consideration for the Pulitzer.

Andrew Dominik, an Australian filmmaker (born in New Zealand) has made some pretty terrific movies so far. Two great Nick Cave documentaries in recent years, both dealing with the grief that has encapsulated Cave’s life and is therefore now also the focus of his career. And some 20 years ago as a young debut filmmaker, he wrote and directed Chopper, which is not only a brilliant piece of filmmaking, it also gave the world Eric Bana as an actual serious threat in acting. He’s been often brilliant ever since and all thanks to that role. Dominik has made a couple of other solid films too – he possibly hadn’t put a foot wrong actually.

But boy did he blunder with Blonde.

It is almost comically bad, and yet there’s really not a genuine laugh to be had. Blonde doesn’t have that compelling aspect of The Bad Movie. There’s nothing hurtling you along to see what madness might next unfold, it’s just ponderous and unforgivingly blunt and dull as the dishwater they dyed the wigs in.

Much has been made of Ana de Armas in the lead. And I think she tried really hard to keep her head held high and carry the material. But I also don’t think she was either great, or right for the role. She was like Alf back when he was stuck on earth, unable to get back to his place of birth. She was making the best of this bad situation. For her the filming of Blonde was some disastrous extended vacation.

And I say that as someone who thought that Ana de Armas fully carried the rather average films Knock Knock and Deep Water. So she can certainly do the heavy lifting.

I started watching Blonde and lasted about 20 minutes. That seems to be the consensus actually. A lot of people I’ve talked to mention 15-30 minutes, I’ve heard of 45 a few times too.

Well, I had in mind that I had made it through Diana: The Musical by biting it off into chunks. I had actually done much the same with Scorsese’s The Irishman – which I genuinely think was his worst movie, a pointless load of tosh that was overlong and gimmicked to hell with the digital de-aging and a cast of legends sleepwalking. Fuck that film.    

So I buckled back up with Blonde and lasted another 25 minutes or so. And then a half hour. Then – finally an hour. And eventually, a couple of days later, I had emerged. But I was no Andy Dufresne. It was, if anything, a small break in the tunnel. There was no feeling of freedom and much cling of aftertaste.

What was this film meant to be?

A Woman exploited, mocked, derided, and there was no real strength of character shown – which I believe was maybe Dominik’s intention. There was also the give-me-my-life-back sequence of a talking foetus, and a mimed blowjob.

These things didn’t need to happen.

They shouldn’t have happened.

And they weren’t even the worst things about Blonde. The worst things about it were that a really decent cast was assembled, and that a formerly decent filmmaker got drunk with the power, so sure he was doing something interesting and/or brave.

This was Netflix at its typical worst too: Throwing dollars at a problem and offering no parameters. Basically saying, “shit, it’s the pandemic. Make us a film on a budget. And make it about someone important will you”.

I want to say what a joke.

But there’s no way to laugh at this. Beyond thinking that most of the “bad” movies that end up in bad movie lists, or books, know on some level what they’re doing and where they are heading.

Blonde still wants to be taken very seriously. And deserves no such thing ever.