LOVE, MARILYN
USA, France, 2012, 107min.   
Director: Liz Garbus
Cast: Glenn Close, Uma Thurman, Lindsay Lohan, Hope Davis, F. Murray Abraham, Elizabeth Banks, Adrien Brody, Ellen Burstyn.

 

“When they ask you what I was really like… what Marilyn Monroe was really like — what will you say?”
The sensational discovery at the heart of this film compels us to realize not only how little we truly know about Marilyn Monroe, but also that much of what we think we know is little more than a carefully constructed illusion rather than reality itself.
Prepare for a revelation: an unexpected perspective, an intimate dialogue, a deeply personal encounter.
Unique materials — letters and photographs preserved in the archives of her last husband, playwright Arthur Miller, together with personal diaries, poems, notes, and rare behind-the-scenes footage entrusted by Marilyn to Lee Strasberg, her longtime mentor and close friend — have finally become accessible to the public and provide the foundation for a profound re-examination of her image and legacy.
This bold cinematic journey creates the rare privilege of looking behind the curtain of history, transforming documentary investigation into a deeply personal experience — a sentimental journey into the past. To a place where the legend fades and a lonely woman remains, one who spent her life searching for her dream.
Vulnerability, a painful sense of inadequacy, inner conflict, and hidden anxiety emerge here with striking clarity.
We have long passed the point where Marilyn Monroe’s intelligence and sensitivity require defending. Even while playing the “dumb blonde,” she was never a caricature. There was always a subtle, almost imperceptible irony in her performances — too delicate to be accidental: “I can be smart when it’s important, but most men don’t like it.”
The film unfolds as a richly layered tapestry in which Marilyn appears not only as an enduring symbol of sensuality, but as a heroine who could have stepped out of a play by Tennessee Williams — a living, vulnerable woman of quiet strength, sustained by dignity and a longing for understanding and human tenderness.
Elegant and artistically refined, the film becomes both an inventive exploration of destiny and a tender love letter to the blonde the world longed to adore, yet never truly understood.

 

Language: English