If anything, since its inception, cinema has been an art of apparitions. There’s a ghostly quality to the medium, no pun intended. As celluloid flickers through a projector, images cast themselves upon a screen, showing actors and people trapped in a moment of time, depicting what has once and never been. In many respects, that sense of hauntedness, of time lost and now regained, of phantoms of actors dead but returned to life onscreen, is the spirit of the art form.
But do movies really, truly raise the dead? The cast of Andrew Dominik‘s “Blonde” believe so, especially the actress who plays Marylin Monroe in the upcoming film, Ana de Armas. “I truly believe she [Monroe] was very close to us, she was with us,” de Armas told Variety on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival in the lead-up to the movie’s world premiere. “She was all I thought about, she was all I dreamed about. She was all I could talk about. She was with me, and it was beautiful,” added de Armas. “It was a very strong sensation that was something in the air. And she was approving of what we were doing.”
Based on Joyce Carol Oates‘s best-selling 2000 novel, “Blonde” is an immersive, unflinching look at the life and career of Monroe from her childhood as Norma Jeane Baker to her ride to stardom and various romantic entanglements. As the biopic continues, however, the lines between fact and fiction blur to explore the widening rift between Monroe’s public and private selves. It’s a heavy story for any actress to tackle, but de Armas wanted to tap into its deep sadness and intensity. “I didn’t want to protect myself from that,” de Armas said, “It was important that I experience all of it.”
“Blonde” is a passion project for Dominik, over a decade in the making. Dominik shot the film on location in Hollywood, including the apartment where Norma Jeane grew up and the house Monroe died in. Production for the film even began on the date of Monroe’s death, August 4. “Her dust is everywhere in Los Angeles and [the film] definitely took on some elements of being a seance,” Dominik added. So, the filmmaker as a spiritual medium isn’t a metaphor lost on Dominik, either.
Adrien Brody also felt something in the air during the production of “Blonde.” “Her [Monroe’s] inner struggle, her sadness, all the unresolved traumatic moments in her life that never left her, is almost criminal,” he told Variety. “I have always been drawn to that aspect of this.” Brody plays renowned playwright Arthur Miller in the movie, Monroe’s third husband. The film also stars Bobby Cannavale, Xaiver Samuel, Evan Williams, Julianne Nicholson, and Caspar Phillipson, among others.
Has Dominik, de Armas, and the rest of the cast and crew of “Blonde” resurrected Monroe in the new movie? Maybe not entirely. Our review (read it here) says, “though Dominik’s ideological purpose is altogether convincing, getting his ideas across too often comes at the expense of this version of Monroe’s agency.” If Dominik indeed catches the spirit of Monroe in “Blonde,” then it’s a ghost fraught with demons, and his and de Armas’s depiction of them is unrelenting.
After a limited theatrical release on September 16, “Blonde” hits Netflix on September 28.