I respectfully disagree with this because I don’t think society has a romanticized view of Marilyn. Yes, she’s an icon of beauty, glamour, all of that. But, she is also very widely seen as tragically vulnerable and a victim of her fame, someone who was only looked at superficially. The woman who seemed to have it all but was lonely and wounded irl. None of that is a revelation.

There’s a way to depict the tragic parts of her life without entirely reducing her to that. The issue with Blonde is that it only portrays her as this beaten down, broken woman. Not only that but it sexualizes her to such an excessive degree that the depictions of her treatment at the hands of men come across as just as exploitative in the film as it was in reality. The film just wants her to cry or show her tits or both. Oh and there is the fact that the filmmaker, on the record, called Marilyn nothing but a well-dressed whore, totally dismissing her talent and contribution to film history.

In spite of how depressed or abused a person was, every person is multifaceted and has a wide range of experiences. No sad person is sad all the time or in pain all the time. Blonde doesn’t treat Marilyn like a dimensional person. It treats her like a one-note punching bag and does it in a way that is absolutely ridiculous.