Director Andrew Dominik has described his upcoming Marilyn Monroe movie Blonde as a combination of Hollywood classics Raging Bull and Citizen Kane. Dominik's new drama stars Ana de Armas as Monroe, the iconic actress who solidified herself as the "blonde bombshell" of the 1950s with hits such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, and the Billy Wilder classic Some Like it Hot. Unfortunately, Monroe's life was cut short at the age of 36 due to a barbiturate overdose in an apparent suicide.
Completed in 2021, Dominik's Blonde is slated to be released on Netflix with an NC-17 rating. Bobby Cannavale also stars as New York Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio, Monroe's second husband. Meanwhile, Adrien Brody portrays the actress' third husband, Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Miller. Brody previously saw a cut of the film and had reportedly called it "powerful," specifically singling out de Armas' performance and calling her "outrageously good."
Speaking with Collider, Dominik compares Blonde to two widely-acclaimed films that often stand among Hollywood's best. When it comes to how he views Blonde as a film, he compares it to Martin Scorsese's sports biopic Raging Bull and Orson Welles' pseudo-biopic Citizen Kane. Read what the director said below.
"Blonde is a movie for all the unloved children of the world. It’s like Citizen Kane and Raging Bull had a baby daughter. Well, the whole idea of Blonde was to detail a childhood drama and then show the way in which that drama splits the adults into a public and private self. And how the adult sees the world through the lens of that childhood drama, and it’s sort of a story of a person whose rational picture of the world as being overwhelmed by her unconscious, and it uses the iconography of Marilyn Monroe."
Both Raging Bull and Citizen Kane are renowned films that dissect the lives of some of the most famous individuals of their time. Raging Bull starred Robert DeNiro as the famed boxer Jake LaMotta and used time-jumps to detail how LaMotta rose in the ranks to become one of the greatest boxers in the world before nearly losing everything. Loosely based on the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, Citizen Kane frames the life of Charles Foster Kane through the eyes of those who knew him best, detailing moments of his life following his death. Dominik also calls the Monroe story in Blonde a tragedy and a nightmare, adding, "It’s sort of like an unwanted child who becomes the most wanted woman in the world and has to deal with all of the desire that is directed at her, and how confusing that is."
Dominik makes an interesting comparison as both Raging Bull and Citizen Kane are brilliant character studies. Raging Bull is a raw drama that shows the pressure of the pursuit of greatness as well as the consequences of desire and debilitating insecurities. Citizen Kane depicts the result of a man who was robbed of his childhood and attempts to find the love he once felt from his mother. Dominik has set a high bar for himself with his comparison to Martin Scorsese and Orson Welles' work. If Blonde can come close to matching the greatness that inspired it, then fans will undoubtedly be pleased when the film lands on Netflix later this year.
Source: Collider