Blonde: a fetus, a vagina and an infinite controversy

• Critica Blonde turns Ana de Armas into a myth and is confirmed as the great film of the year

• Interview Ana de Armas: "I doubt that those who have decided on the 'Blonde' category have seen a porn movie"

• Interview Andrew Dominik: "Ana de Armas is pure instinct in front of the camera. I love her"

Something is going on with '

'... and you know it.

Of all the reactions (it is proven), the most profitable, the one that generates the most '

', the one that is socially best considered, is indignation.

Thomas Mann spoke of "the strangely deep satisfaction" that comes from spiritual protest.

He said it in reference to the divine curmudgeon Schopenhauer, but what goes for a German philosopher from another century goes just as well for a New Zealand film director from this one.

No one is unaware that of all the recent cultural offers (not only cinematographic), none was more eagerly awaited (and with the sharpest of knives between the teeth) than

's film based on the novel of the same name by

on the figure of

The production company Netflix, in fact, was so clear from the first second how conflictive and explosive the material was that it never quite knew what to do with it: whether to present it as the greatest of events or to bury it two meters underground.

He opted for both: first he buried the project with all kinds of spurious demands and then, given the resistance of the author, he launched it to the four winds.

What was certain, for better or worse, was the waves of outrage that awaited.

And so it has been.

If you're not incensed by '

' by now, let him watch it.

The arguments are varied and for all tastes.

Faced with Dominik's risky and something more than just brilliant visual commitment that mixes formats, times and dynamite structures in a provocative downward spiral towards the abyss, he can argue that why bother.

Faced with the expressionist bet that dispenses with the exhibition scheduled in three acts and even with the narration itself, there is always

If because of the title (not because of the novel in which the film is based) you can't see a single feature of the traditional biographical film ('

'), it's a good time to demand a little more rigor from wikipedia.

You can also vent against the script that makes a fetus speak (in reality, it's adult Marilyn talking to Marilyn as a child, but who cares), or attack the very un-American accent of the Cuban

, or cry against the excess of crying and decibels of the tape or, if necessary, demand revenge because what is told there in that certain way was really more like that than like that.

And so.

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• Writing: RAQUEL QUÍLEZMadrid

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Cinema.

Penélope Cruz praises the work of Ana de Armas in 'Blonde': "It is very difficult to play Marilyn and she has embroidered it"

• Editorial: EUROPE PRESS

Penélope Cruz praises the work of Ana de Armas in 'Blonde': "It is very difficult to play Marilyn and she has embroidered it"

All this happened in Venice as soon as the film was presented and a few weeks after its premiere on the aforementioned platform.

The critics, basically, chose either to embrace the chaos and greet the film as the event that it already is or, directly, to stand up with a gesture duly indignant and in the most angry way possible.

We are polarized and you know it.

There is no way to resist that strangely deep satisfaction if necessary.

And yet the worst was yet to come.

Ana de Armas in a moment of 'Blonde'.

Joyce Carol Oates saw the film not so long ago and was quick to give it a feminist thumbs up.

"I think it's a brilliant piece of art, obviously not for everyone. Surprising that in a post-

she wrote on Twitter.

Actually, it was the second time that she did such a thing: speak well of the film.

In a previous montage she also showed not so much her enthusiasm, but also her stupor;

an excited stupor, of course.

She even confessed that the images of her had been so raw that she even had to pause.

The author, in reality, came out as a firewall against what was already a horde.

It's not clear who started it, but it is clear who is the most cited (and even copied) voice: '

.

She saw '

' and as her partner in charge of the recession of the book published in 2000 before her, she did not hesitate.

No one can accuse the Big Apple newspaper of inconsistency.

Something that many of the critics standing right now cannot say.

For the criticism that has already raised its voice against the way in which men see women's sex on account of

the film forgets the proven talent of the actress to make her nothing more than a victim.

And he adds in the best phrase written so far about the film:

.

And he adds again: "Given all the humiliations and horrors Marilyn Monroe endured during her 36 years, it's a relief that she didn't have to suffer the vulgarities of '

,' the latest necrophiliac entertainment to exploit her."

The truth is that, cold and from the start, no one saw such criticism coming.

The accusation that Mel Gibson probably had when he shot his stark

It did not enter into the plans of this other pagan passion.

Neither in those of Oates nor in those of the director convinced both internally and externally that his film was exactly the opposite.

In every interview he gave at first to the heat of the Venetian Lido, a good part of his efforts focused on vindicating the Metoo as a condition for the possibility of a production that otherwise would never have taken place.

For the rest, as he also insisted on pointing out whenever he could, what interested him was to show how the myth (mask) of Marilyn ruined Norma Jeane (the face) from the macabre consciousness of a society (ours) given over to consumption of their desires transformed into simple merchandise.

How a reflection so stern in its origin can be suddenly turned into the formula

is what neither Oates nor Dominik nor probably Ana de Armas herself can explain.

Ana de Armas in a moment of 'Blonde'.NETFLIX

In reality, and seen with a bit of perspective, no one can accuse Dominik of improvising or betraying himself or inventing an 'ad hoc' argument to get out of trouble.

Viewed in perspective, a good part of her filmography works on the same idea.

Both

(2007) and

(2012) want to show the ravages of acquired legends or mythologies that equally serve to celebrate and justify genocide than violence.

The film, in effect, questions the viewer about their own conception of a supervening mythology that is not questioned at all.

Later, there were those who denounced that even the sequences reproduced in simply prodigious detail from Marilyn's films were nothing more than another way of stealing the last thing that could be stolen - memory - from the actress herself.

It didn't help calm things down that in an interview with

magazine , Dominik called

a

.

Making friends.

In any case, the final fireworks was yet to come.

It turns out that 'Blonde' is, in the opinion of the

an anti-abortion film.

In the tape, Marilyn aborts three times, two of the abortions being illegal against her will.

At one point (the most charmingly 'kitsch' or just plain stupid, as you like), Marilyn speaks, it has already been said, to herself through the fetus.

For the national director of art and entertainment of the aforementioned association, the inaccuracy with which the scene is reflected is to blame and even more so now, a few months after the repeal of the right to abortion by the Supreme Court.

"While abortion is safe and essential health care,

have long contributed to the stigmatization of abortion by using medically inaccurate descriptions of fetuses and pregnancy.

'

' reinforces this message with a CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) speaking fetus, depicted as a fully formed baby," the statement said.

Fetus image of 'Blonde'.

In the heat of this denunciation, once again the

did not miss the opportunity to "exploit" (they do and happily) this new front of attack.

In a long article signed by the journalist

, Dominik is discussed for having used a representation of a fetus that (attention) did not exist when Marilyn aborted.

That way of representing the unborn and that corresponds to the common imaginary right now was created for 'Life' magazine by the Swedish photographer

in 1965. However the actress died in 1962, bad.

Bad him, bad Kubrick for his Star Child of '2001, a space odyssey' and bad everything.

The article, truthfully, ends with a bang: "In her book

,' medical historian Barbara Duden traces the public exposure of the fetus, and its growing cultural supremacy, during the second half of the 20th century. She calls this process 'the skinning of women'. 'Blonde' is also a film about a woman who is skinned by the culture in general. First, by the Hollywood of her time, which made her a sex symbol. And now, by the Our Hollywood, which has claimed access to his mind,

recycled

How do they stay?

And that Dominik makes her film against precisely the Hollywood of today, and always.

Ana de Armas in a moment of 'Blonde'.

How can you be a product of Hollywood having taken 10 years to get a film off the ground due to the direct opposition of precisely Hollywood?

How can it be a savage manifesto that exploits the woman's body and at the same time a more than evident clamor against the exploitation of the woman's body?

How can you be anti-feminist with the approval of the writer who has made feminism her reason for being?

From the abortion, the director's answer remains: "No one would have cared about that if he had made the film in 2008, and probably no one will care in four years.

Tact, it is shown, is not his forte.

For Andrew Dominik, who has directly entered everything and all the controversies, what is happening, in his own way, proves him right.

If it is possible to make feminism from the denunciation of a type of feminism;

it is possible in the same way to use bad reviews as proof that everything is fine.

Very good, even.

, commented recently at the San Sebastian Festival.

"Most things written about her tell us, 'I knew her, I really understood her, not you.' That's what Norman Mailer and Gloria Steinem's books do. 'Blonde' is no different. 'Blonde ' appeals to that desire for rescue. And the viewer is invited to do that. And suffer the frustration. Keep in mind that the dark side of that desire is a fantasy of punishment. Which is not good. If you want to rescue someone That someone probably needs you to rescue them from you. And that's what the movie is doing. A lot of the negative reviews are following that same instinct, they want to protect Marilyn. They want to protect her from me, and even those who love Marilyn! Ana but they don't like the movie, they want to save her from this horrible movie!

So I feel like what happens is a measure of the movie's success.” How do they fare?

Be that as it may, the truth is that

As much as all the critics have surrendered to the work of Ana de Armas, few give anything for a production offered daily in sacrifice to global outrage.

However, and precisely because of them (because of their indignation), the film ends up not talking about Marilyn as much as about us.

Suddenly, a film is no longer discussed in terms of its aesthetic, technical or simply artistic achievements to be crushed in the strictly ideological field (but in its most limited and poor sense).

Perhaps it obeys the sign of the times or something has to do with the mode of consumption: in the space of the home screen.

Or maybe, and here's the knot from '

',

Last year the mediocre

' became a positive phenomenon due to its ideological opportunity.

And this year '

' has experienced the opposite phenomenon from an opposite starting point: a proposal as risky and captivating as it is unconventional, squandered for being '

' out of place.

In any case, the taste of

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

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