What's your misery index? How 'Blonde' will test your capacity for watching someone suffer

“Blonde” is a quandary.

It’s exceptionally well made, daring and experimental, with a powerful performance from Ana de Armas at its center. At its everything, really — she dominates the film, as well she should.

But the film is also too long, too self-indulgent, just too much. It is a marathon of misery.

Based on Joyce Carol Oates’ novel about Marilyn Monroe — novel, not biography, and that’s important — screenwriter and director Andrew Dominik’s film is a long, tough slog through what, at least as depicted here, has to be one of the most unhappy lives ever lived, start to finish — and it is difficult to watch.

De Armas embodies this fully; when she read for the role producers must have asked her to cry, a lot. It’s a bold, fully committed performance as she descends the depths of despair, and takes the audience right along with her.

Whether you want to make that trip depends on your capacity for watching someone suffer.

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Ana de Armas plays a dual role in 'Blonde'

There are really two characters here: Marilyn, the movie star, and Norma Jeane, the real woman behind her. Norma Jeane sees Marilyn as the pop-culture creation that she is — outwardly famous, but hollow, a shell, a vessel into which people pour their own dreams and desires.

Trouble starts from the film’s first frames. Ash and flames light up the night sky. But as people evacuate, Norma Jeane’s mother, Gladys (Julianne Nicholson — disturbed, scary and excellent), drives toward the fire raging in the Hollywood Hills.

Gladys is drunk and raving — Norma Jeane’s father lives up there, she claims, in a fireproof mansion.

Who is her father? It’s the question that haunts Norma Jeane, and the movie.

He is a big shot in Hollywood, Gladys tells her daughter, but she can’t say his name. Gladys keeps a framed photo of him — a generically handsome man with a hat and a mustache — in the house like a religious totem. Norma Jeane can look at the picture but mustn’t touch.

Gladys is an alcoholic, mentally ill, sometimes good to Norma Jeane, sometimes resentful, sometimes murderous — in one harrowing scene, she tries to drown her daughter in a bathtub.

To Marilyn, her father must seem like a lifeline, a way out of her horrific upbringing.

A story woven around a cycle of abuse

The movie’s timeline is fluid, not rigid, which further distances it from a standard biopic.

Norma Jeane ends up in a foster home, but the film quickly moves ahead to Hollywood, where she has success, but not on her own terms. And the abuse continues.

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For instance, she is ushered into the offices of Mr. Z. (presumably Darryl Zanuck), a studio chief who, without hesitation, rapes her. And then gives her a part.

She finds some happiness in a three-way relationship with Charlie Chaplin Jr. (Xavier Samuel) and Edward G. Robinson Jr. (Evan Williams), who seem to care about her as a person as well as a sexual object (though they care about that, too).

They complain about being the sons of famous men. At least, Norma Jeane tells them, you know who your fathers are.

She will continue the search for hers for the remainder of her short life, desperate to find him, even after she is a worldwide icon.

She calls the men in her life “Daddy.” One of these is a famous retired baseball player (Bobby Cannavale), known here as “the Ex-Athlete” but clearly based on Joe DiMaggio. They seem happy until his controlling nature and jealousy take over.

He’s particularly incensed by the famous scene in “The Seven Year Itch” in which Marilyn — she’s Marilyn when she’s acting — stands over a grate and the wind blows her dress up. In real life, the scene was shot in front of a crowd as a publicity stunt. It is in "Blonde," too, but Dominik, the director, turns the crowd into a leering pack of creeps. He does this kind of thing elsewhere, as well.

At 2 hours and 46 minutes, 'Blonde' is a punishing film

Norma Jeane will eventually meet and marry “the Playwright” (Adrien Brody), a stand-in for Arthur Miller.

Happiness proves fleeting, and at this point, Norma Jeane is increasingly lost in her search for her father — and for her own identity. In one remarkable scene, she is struggling, manic, until her make-up artist comes to her home and instructs her to look into the mirror and conjure Marilyn.

De Armas transforms. It’s fascinating and horrifying.

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It’s all so sordid and sad. And compelling, at least for a while.

Dominik’s theory seems to be that if a scene is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. Sometimes this works, as he switches up film stocks and goes from black-and-white to color. Sometimes it doesn’t. Two examples stand out.

Twice Norma Jeane endures forced abortions, which we see from what might be described as a womb-cam — from the fetus’ point of view, I guess.

Later the President, never identified but obviously, John F. Kennedy, forces her to perform oral sex on him while he chats on the phone, after his henchmen have hustled her into a hotel suite. This is almost certainly what got the film an NC-17 rating.

“Blonde” is 2 hours and 46 minutes long. The irony is that de Armas’ performance would be even more powerful in a less unwieldy film. Instead, we get relentless suffering. Better to hold out for the Oscars clip when she’s nominated.

'Blonde' 2.5 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Cast: Ana de Armas, Julianne Nicholson, Adrien Brody.

Rating: NC-17 for some sexual content.

Note: In theaters Sept. 23, streaming on Netflix Sept. 28.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Blonde' movie review: Ana de Armas stars in this painful watch