What an utter train wreck of a documentary, The Myth of Marilyn Monroe is. Directed by Oliver Elphick, it charts her rise and fall, with some historical context of America in the fifties, as opposed to telling her life story with any nuance. Instead, fairytale rags to riches clichés abound.
The American Dream symbolism of Atomic bombs and cheesecake bombshells, post-war prosperity and the Red Scare is all present and correct. Then it’s the brief history of Monroe’s rise: right place right time, being at first the classic GI pin-up, having been discovered by a fashion photographer while working in a munitions factory, and then attempting to subvert the wiggling, giggling “dumb blonde” stereotype amid the constant intrusive pop of paparazzi camera flashbulbs.
But there’s precious little new insight presented, in terms of exploration into why her marriages to first James Dougherty, and then Joe Di Maggio, broke down. It briefly touches on her prescription drug addiction and mental health problems, but fails to unpack in any depth alleged issues of domestic abuse, abuse by the mafia, and affairs or friendships with other key players in her life like Montgomery Clift, Natasha Lytess, Milton Berle and Susan Strasberg.
There’s also no mention of her potential neuro- diversity or even endometriosis, a health condition leading to infertility, which had been well -documented in many posthumous biographies on Monroe published throughout the last six decades. Instead, there are endless shots of Monroe looking utterly bereft, with no commentary on why .
Whooshing through her life at 0-100, she’s reduced to nothing but a sad totem of fifties mass consumerism, “the defining martyr of the decade”. There’s nothing too on her comic timing, how well-read she was, her quick wit or determination to forge autonomy against the Hollywood system through creating her own independent production company. Ultimately, the real tragedy here is what a wasted opportunity this whole film is.
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