PRODUCTION. BLONDE
Blonde ambition
Chayse Irvin’s Blonde cinematography paints a fragmented fiction of history’s most famed actress – wilfully disruptive and emotionally charged in equal measure
WORDS. Lee Renwick IMAGES. Netflix
T here are a few cinematic codes by which most abide. With each new film comes fresh visual delights, and while pictures are as varied as the narratives they depict, one thing is almost guaranteed: consistency. Spectators possess a wonderful ability to settle into the strangest cinematographic grooves, provided it continues to deliver as expected until the final frame flits by. It’s a comfortable experience that Chayse Irvin denies throughout the entirety of Blonde . From scene to scene, images shift in a way untethered to time, story or aesthetic – anchored more so than anything by an intoxicating performance from Ana de Armas. Andrew Dominik’s most talked about film to date has been the subject of both criticism and great adulation. But, for those capable of overlooking questions of art versus taste, one thing is undeniable. If, as Roland Barthes quoted, “What had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes,” then Blonde is a veritable feast. “When I heard about this particular story, I was very excited. It’s based on a book, which deviates from fact and combines a lot of characters into a single metaphorical individual. It pushes the psychological experience Marilyn Monroe may have been going through to the point of hyperbole. I sensed that it desired a visual structure which worked outside of conventions,” begins Irvin. “I have, in the past, felt more connected to a visual language that was a bit more
observational. It gave spectators more licence over how they viewed it, whereas this film tries to show a point of view very literally. That point of view could be expressed in a fragmented and distorted way. It didn’t have to adhere to notions of logic. In fact, it was much more emotionally driven.” Between combinations of aspect ratios, sensor formats, lenses and choices between colour or monochrome, we see an endless array of looks. In moments, they are typically complementary to the subject matter. In others, they appear random and psychologically jarring. Irvin’s process is unique to the degree of being impossible to emulate. “I didn’t know exactly where ideas would be applied. Andrew had a better sense of that, because he could always view the film from a wider perspective than I could,” Irvin explains. “I feel it’s very much the responsibility of a DOP to capture the moment. A director sees a structure and tries to create meaning at different intervals. “Instead, I would present visual ideas in moments of inspiration. If I saw something during the blocking that was connected with a particular emotion, I could sense a certain cinematic device I’d developed could be applied here to support that theme.” It’s not the first time Irvin has approached cinematography in this way, but previously it was little more than a visual experiment. Here, on a much
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