The movie Blonde is not for the faint of heart.

Released on Netflix on Sept. 16, 2022, Blonde covers the life of Marilyn Monroe behind all the glamor and fame. The movie is rated NC-17 on Netflix, and rightfully so.

Now, NC-17 movies are not really my thing, I prefer action movies. However, I still went into watching Blonde with an open mind. 

Watching that movie was an uncomfortable experience. I had to take breaks fairly often to process the implied graphic details. That may mean I’m sheltered or innocent but the two-hour and 47-minute movie took me well over four hours to watch. 

When I first heard about the movie I thought it would be an informative documentary about Marilyn Monroe and was excited to watch it. I could not have been more wrong. The story is a rollercoaster ride of mental illness, childhood trauma, and sexual assault. 

After watching Blonde, I paused to think about the purpose of the movie. What drove the writers to add all of the details they added? At first, I thought they wanted to make the film as realistic as possible, since it is labeled as a biography, but after further research, I found out that in comparison to Marilyn’s actual life, the movie is not based in truth. Most of it was creative interpretation from the writers. I think they may have taken it a little too far.

However, I will say it was a very well made, high quality movie. While watching, I could tell that they put a lot of time and money into filming and post production. The camera work, set design and visual effects worked well to enhance the film. 

It’s also successful. Almost a month after its release, it remains one of Netflix’s top ten movies, currently sitting at number eight. However, I do not believe that it deserves that rating based on the quality of the film alone. Other people who have seen Blonde seem to agree with me, because it currently has a 42% Rotten Tomatoes rating, with a 32% audience score. These are scores the movie deserves. 

Personally, I would not recommend Blonde to anyone. When I first learned of the movie, I saw its rating, so I knew there would be some inappropriate parts, but other than that, I had no idea what to expect, and it was so much worse than I had anticipated.The marketing for the movie could have done so much better to make sure the audience knew exactly what to expect before watching Blonde. Also, the storyline has far too many fictional additions, which makes it creep further and further from the biography category. It doesn’t seem right to categorize this movie as a biography since the majority of what happened was fiction to dramatize Marilyn’s life. In the future, I’ll stick to action films.