{"id":1665840,"date":"2022-09-30T06:53:16","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T10:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1665840"},"modified":"2022-09-30T06:53:37","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T10:53:37","slug":"netflixs-blonde-is-miles-apart-from-the-2001-version-of-the-marilyn-monroe-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/netflixs-blonde-is-miles-apart-from-the-2001-version-of-the-marilyn-monroe-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix\u2019s \u2018Blonde\u2019 Is Miles Apart From The 2001 Version Of The Marilyn Monroe Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnetflixs-blonde-is-miles-apart-from-the-2001-version-of-the-marilyn-monroe-fiction%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1665840&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>The first Netflix movie ever to receive an \u201cNC-17\u201d rating, writer and director Andrew Dominik\u2019s \u201cBlonde\u201d has what some might consider an unfair advantage over the 2001 version of the Marilyn Monroe drama. The levels of salty language, frontal nudity, and beyond \u201cR\u201d depictions of sexual situations are high \u2014 something only a minority of audiences will appreciate. The remaining viewers will likely find the content of the new film adaptation to be excessively and unnecessarily graphic and downbeat.<\/p>\n<p>Originally planned to be a 175-page novella, writer Joyce Carol Oates\u2019 finished work \u201cBlonde\u201d came in at more than 700 pages. Oates has stated multiple times since its 2000 release that \u201cBlonde\u201d is a work of fiction, although the bulk of the secondary characters are barely cloaked versions of real people, and the title subject is referred to by both her birth name (Norma Jean Mortenson) and professional moniker (Marilyn Monroe). When you throw past actual events into the mix, it\u2019s easy to understand why readers (and later viewers) would be confused.<\/p>\n<p>Oates and her publisher HarperCollins would have served themselves and readers better by presenting \u201cBlonde\u201d as \u201crevisionist\u201d \u2014 a storytelling device that blurs the lines between good and evil and truth and fiction and has a long history in film. Initially employed in Westerns, revisionism has enjoyed something of a resurgence lately with titles such as \u201cOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood,\u201d \u201cSpencer,\u201d \u201cArgo,\u201d \u201cMarie Antoinette,\u201d and director Isaiah Washington\u2019s masterpiece \u201cCorsicana\u201d from earlier this year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Both the 2001 and 2022 film adaptations of \u201cBlonde\u201d fit squarely into the revisionist milieu yet are worlds apart regarding tone, approach, look, and content. While many of these differences are rooted in the two filmmakers\u2019 visions, the majority of the contrast can be attributed to ratings limitations.<\/p>\n<p>The 2001 version \u2014 directed by Joyce Chopra (\u201cLaw &#038; Order\u201d) and written by Joyce Eliason (\u201cThe Last Don\u201d) \u2014 was a TV movie, originally broadcast on CBS. It is rated TV-14, which falls somewhere between the MPAA \u201cPG\u201d and \u201cPG-13\u201d ratings, indicating the most \u201cmature\u201d content at the time. This means no nudity, no profanity, and a minimum amount of violence. More prominent in the advent of premium cable, the TV-MA rating indicates anything goes; it is the hard \u201cR\u201d equivalent for episodic television.<\/p>\n<p>While certainly no day at the beach, Chopra\u2019s version is also a downer but has advantages over the new film that mass audiences will find more approachable, viewer-friendly, and less \u201cin-your-face.\u201d A prime example is the first encounter between Norma Jean and a nameless studio executive believed to be based on 20th Century Fox co-founder Darryl F. Zanuck.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The earlier movie shows Norma Jean being ordered to lie down on a white bearskin rug, immediately followed by a scene of her in a restroom appearing disheveled and out of sorts. The new film leaves nothing whatsoever to the imagination and could be the bluntest and most accurate visual definition of a \u201ccasting couch\u201d encounter.<\/p>\n<p>Chopra\u2019s 2001 \u201cBlonde\u201d takes a \u201cless is more\u201d approach. It\u2019s what we don\u2019t see that gets into our heads and dares our imaginations to fill in the blanks. From this perspective, the 2001 take is vastly superior to Dominik\u2019s sledgehammer rendering.<\/p>\n<p>Both films deserve kudos for devoting significant portions of their narratives to Norma Jean\u2019s nightmare of a childhood and years spent with her mother Gladys Baker. An unstable and volatile woman who worked as a film editor, Baker believed it was the birth of her daughter that drove away the unnamed father (identified earlier this year via DNA to be Charles Stanley Gifford, a film lab technician).<\/p>\n<p>The mental and physical abuse levied on her by Gladys and never knowing the identity of her father forever tainted Monroe\u2019s psyche. By choice and otherwise, she never had children, and she regularly addressed her three husbands as \u201cDaddy.\u201d Again, the way the respective directors present these childhood passages is radically different. Dominik\u2019s treatment is a horror-drenched fever dream whereas Chopra is more realistic \u2014 which should not be confused with \u201csanitized.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Likely because of budgetary restraints, Chopra could not afford to include the same lavish recreations of Monroe\u2019s more memorable movie scenes. While both include knockout takes on the \u201cDiamonds Are a Girl\u2019s Best Friend\u201d song and dance number from \u201cGentleman Prefer Blondes,\u201d Dominik, with $22 million to play with, includes iconic passages seen in \u201cThe Seven Year Itch,\u201d \u201cNiagara,\u201d and \u201cSome Like it Hot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The cinematography of Dominik\u2019s film is all over the map in a \u201cJFK\u201d sort of way. He mixes black and white and color stocks, offers differing aspect ratios, and, on occasion, throws in some CGI. It\u2019s very artsy but also more than a little show-offish. Dominik clearly values style over content.<\/p>\n<p>Chopra\u2019s effort \u2014 making the most of a modest TV movie budget \u2014 goes the more traditional route and closely reflects the time in which the story is set. There are no fancy bells and whistles and only one scene employs noticeable special effects. The palate is colorful and lush and looks like an actual\u00a0Monroe film.<\/p>\n<p>Both sets of filmmakers showed immense restraint and resisted almost certain temptations by being either quite vague about or totally avoiding the events surrounding Monroe\u2019s death. There are no mentions of the cause or the inclusion of any conspiracy theories. For more on that subject check out this year\u2019s uneven \u201cThe Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes\u201d on Netflix.<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, neither of these movies would have worked (and both do quite well in different ways) without the stellar performances in the title roles by Poppy Montgomery (2001) and Ana de Armas (2022). A naturally blonde native Australian, Montgomery also has a curvier figure and thoroughly nails Monroe\u2019s breathy accent. The shorter Cuban-born de Armas wears blue contacts and occasionally lets the accent slip, but also conquers what is by far a taller, more demanding acting order.<\/p>\n<p>There are more than a dozen movies listed on Wikipedia identified as being about Marilyn Monroe. Besides the two discussed here, the only other one worth your investment of time is the live-action \u201cMy Week with Marilyn\u201d from 2011, directed by Simon Curtis and starring Michelle Williams as Monroe (now on Kanopy).<\/p>\n<p>The 2001 \u201cBlonde\u201d is available for free (with commercials) on Amazon Prime, and the new \u201cBlonde\u201d is out now on Netflix.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Since 1995, Michael Clark has written over 4,000 movie reviews and film-related articles for over 30 local and national media outlets. In 2017 he co-founded the Atlanta Film Critics Circle and is also a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Georgia Film Critics Association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first Netflix movie ever to receive an \u201cNC-17\u201d rating, writer and director Andrew Dominik\u2019s \u201cBlonde\u201d has what some might consider an unfair advantage over the 2001 version of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1383,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1665840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1383"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1665840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1665840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1665840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1665840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}