BLONDE

Stars: Ana de Armas, Bobby Carnavale, Adrien Brody, Lily Fisher, Dan Butler, Xavier Samuel, Evan Williams and Julianne Nicholson.
Writer: Andrew Dominik, based upon the novel by Joyce Carroll Oates.
Director: Andrew Dominik

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Andrew Dominik has spent the best part of a decade writing his adaptation of Joyce Carroll Oates novel or, as she calls, fictional biography; a mighty 700+ pager that reinterpreted the real-world celebrity of Marilyn Monroe as a case study of abuse, mental torment and workplace exploitation. Hollywood and, in one of many shocking sequences, Washington DC, discovered a pliable public goddess figure in the industrially-crafted form of ‘Marilyn Monroe’, deciding early on that the impact upon the emotionally fragile woman that was Norma Jean Baker was inconsequential.

That is the version of the Monroe mythology that Dominik is undertaking in his bold, occasionally brilliant, sometimes infuriating 2.5 hour wallow in fame deconstruction. It is a film full of people who, like the American public since Monroe first appeared on screen in Don’t Bother to Knock, fall willingly and blindly in love with false idols. In tearing down the carefully manufactured facade that was ‘Marilyn Monroe’, he is also merciless in his depiction of baseball great Joe Di Maggio (Bobby Carnavale) and President JFK (Casper Phillipson), fellow icons of America’s golden post-war years.

Enduring the tortuous mental deterioration as Dominik’s Marilyn is Ana de Armas, and the actress is both entirely at one with her director’s vision and, more often than not, significantly better than it. While there are legitimate issues that one may have with Dominik’s style or structure or perceived intent, there can be no reservations as to the bravery and depth of character that de Armas demands of herself. Physically, she is as cinematically luminous as Monroe at her most photogenic, while also offering a stark portrayal of an emotionally incomplete and constantly deteriorating victim of lifelong abuse and loneliness.

The Marilyn Monroe biopic that captures her business acumen and comic timing and acting prowess, aspects of her life that critics have noted is absent from BLONDE, is another film entirely; Dominik’s wildly ambitious work is the story of what the American entertainment industry is willing to do to draw every last drop of humanity out of those it selects to exploit. It is a sad, bitter, horrible tale, which is not how those invested in her legend want to see Marilyn portrayed. But it is a version of her life that is as important in its telling as the perpetuation of her screen-goddess myth.

78/52

Featuring: Walter Murch, Elijah Wood, Osgood Perkins, Guillermo del Toro, Peter Bogdanovich, Bret Easton Ellis, Jamie Lee Curtis, Karyn Kusama, Eli Roth, Leigh Whannell, Mick Garris, Danny Elfman, Richard Stanley, Neil Marshall, Stephen Rebello and Marli Renfro.
Director: Alexandre O. Phillipe.

Rating: 4.5/5

The images and emotions instantly conjured when one hears the words ‘the shower scene’ are reason enough for the existence of Alexandre O. Phillipe’s absorbing documentary, 78/52.  From Robert Bloch’s source novel, Saul Bass’ pre-production storyboarding and the precision of its staging, to the impact it had on audiences and the legacy it has forged, no scene in world cinema history has impacted the medium like Alfred Hitchcock’s butchering of Marion Crane by the blade of Norman Bates in Psycho.

Having dug deep into film pop-culture with previous works The People vs. George Lucas (2010) and Doc of The Dead (2014), the director turns his insightful fan-boy gaze up a notch in this forensic-like examination of the minutiae of the Bates Motel murder. Not all of the content will be revelatory to hard-core film buffs (Hitch’s use of Hershey chocolate sauce; the censorship-pushing flashes of the bare skin of Janet Leigh’s stand-in, Playboy bunny Marli Renfro), but no film has stared so deeply into the long shadow cast by onscreen violence as Phillipe’s often-mesmerising study (fittingly lensed in beautiful monochrome).

Deriving its title from the 78 camera set-ups and 52 edits that ‘Hitch’ employed to change the course of film storytelling, the documentary, like Anthony Perkin’s iconic protagonist, exhibits two distinct personalities. It is first and foremost the great ‘Making of…’ dissection, an infinitely intricate journey into the minds and methodologies that created the sequence. Phillipe has assembled a battalion of industry giants to breakdown its staging, including editor Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now; The Conversation); horror heavyweights Guillermo del Toro, Eli Roth, Leigh Wannell, Mick Garris and Neil Marshall; composer Danny Elfman; author Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho); and such esteemed minds as journalist Stephen Rebello and critic-turned-filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich (whose recollections of attending the 10am screening in Times Square on the first day of release are priceless).

78/52 is also an examination of the power of Hitchcock’s film to enthral and terrify every generation since its release, remaining hypnotically watchable to this day.. As has been repeatedly stated, the initial release of Psycho rocked American cinemagoers to the core; Phillipe goes a step further, implying that it played a significant role in ushering out the dangerous naivety of a nation basking in post-WWII glory and forging a path for the social upheaval of the 1960s. Mirroring the means by which later generations first encountered its horror, the director has several of his contributors sit before a TV screen, in a dreamlike recreation of a late-1950s living room, and take in the film for the umpteenth time. Hipster icons Elijah Wood, Josh Waller and Daniel Noah, founders of the cutting edge production outfit Spectrevision (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night; The Greasy Strangler) share a couch and riff on the vice-like grip Hitchcock’s masterwork holds to this day.

This stylistic flourish ensures the doco avoids becoming a stuffy exercise in academia, along with some well-placed humour. Watching Marion do some basic maths in her notebook ledger, Anthony Perkins’ son Osgood (director of the well-received 2016 thriller, February) wryly comments, “this is a really old film,”; playfully recalling days of being all but nude in front of the notoriously lascivious director, the delightful Renfro is a joy.

Alexandre O. Phillipe’s 78/52 is a giddy, engaging study in filmmaking bravado and of the passionate response such ambitious talent and dark psychology is able to evoke. It works ingeniously because it is simultaneously the voyeur and the subject of the voyeur’s eye; we are watching Norman with the same pulsating thrill as he feels watching Marion through that hole in the wall. 78/52 peels back and peers deeply into half-a-century of cinephile adoration for Hitchcock’s groundbreaking take on Oedipal psychosis.