Andrew Dominik has no regrets about creating one of the most polarizing films of the year.
During an appearance at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia over the weekend, the Australian director addressed the backlash following the fall release of “Blonde,” his Marilyn Monroe biopic.
Noting that American moviegoers mostly “hated” the film, Dominik said he was “very pleased” that the film’s treatment of Monroe “outraged so many people”.
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“We live in a time where it’s important to present women as empowered, and they want to reinvent Marilyn Monroe as an empowered woman,” she said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s what they want to see, and if you don’t show them, it upsets them.”
Based on Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 novel, “Blonde” is rated NC-17 and is said to be a graphic depiction of Monroe’s life, including scenes of miscarriages, sexual assault and substance abuse.
Oates described the book version of “Blonde” as a fictional retelling of Monroe’s life that should not be read as a biography. For viewers accustomed to more popular biopics like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” however, Dominik’s adaptation felt gratuitous and horribly out of place. Although critics praised actor Ana de Armas’ portrayal of Monroe, the film as a whole was largely panned.
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“What’s missing is a sense of what made Monroe more than just another beautiful woman in Hollywood: her genius,” wrote The New York Times, while Entertainment Weekly called the film a “misogynistic melodrama , confused”.
Later, in his speech at the Red Sea International Film Festival, Dominik noted that the general consensus among “conservative” audiences in the United States was that “Blonde” “exploited” Monroe, who died in 1962 .
“Which is a little weird, because she’s dead. The film makes no difference one way or the other,” he said. “What they’re really saying is that the film tapped into their memory of her, their image of her, which is fair enough. But that’s the point of the movie. Try to take the iconography of her life and put it to work with something else, try to take things that are familiar to you and turn the meaning around.”
“But I don’t want to do bedtime stories,” she added.
Source: Huff Post
