A good movie

Since there was really some buzz around this movie for quite a while, I was eager to check it out. Well, it wasn’t an easy watch, that’s for sure. Indeed, by  now, we all know that the life of Marilyn Monroe A.K.A. Norma Jeane Baker was probably not so great after all but Andrew Dominik pushed this idea even further and gave us the bleakest vision on her life that you could possibly imagine. Basically, according to this movie, everything in her life was heavily traumatic, her childhood, her career, her stardom, her pregnancies, her romantic relationships,… Seriously, the damned thing was just relentless. The end-result was basically some kind of feverish nightmare but, unfortunately, the movie didn’t have much else to offer and the fact that it did last almost 3 hours probably didn’t help. The funny thing is that, after all this time, you don’t actually learn much about Monroe, except that her life really sucked from the very beginning until the very end. And, yet, even though the approach chosen to tell the story of this legendary pop icon actually backfired, the damned thing was still fascinating somehow. Indeed, as usual with Dominik, the directing was strong as he constantly mixed up the aspect ratios and moved back and forth between black-and-white and color. And, of course, Ana de Armas gave here a really strong performance. Sure, there was a debate because de Armas is actually Cuban but I think she looked just stunning and it went beyond that as she completely disappeared in this character. Anyway, to conclude, even though I understand why this movie didn’t get much love when it was released and I have to admit that it was rather exhausting to watch, I still think it was quite intriguing but if you are a big fan of Marilyn Monroe, I would actually advise to avoid it.