Megan Lumley

I truly was captived by the dreamlike atmosphere of this movie, the painful vulnerability of the lead and the stunning visuals. Reading Oates' novel gave me a deeper understanding of the film. I feel like perhaps some viewers struggled to believe that a human can be brilliant, genius even, yet broken internally and arrested at a certain age. Marilyn was no intellectual slouch but Hollywood wasn't interested in her brain. She was strong in this movie, but her circumstances unbearable. I found that the contradictions in her character were well demonstrated in this portrayal. It showed her to be more than an image on a wall, more than a vixen, in a time and world that preferred her to be such. The nudity that some object to I believe is in keeping with her life and how she may have seen herself. (Aren't we all in some sense commodities? ) The pain of her story that discomforts some to me says that even today the world wants her to be a flower in a vase that we can leer at with impunity. This was a lovely, gut wrenching piece. I watched it twice.