I’ve been reading various books by the talented Scottish writer Dorothy Dunnett over the past few years. The copy of the book I’m currently reading (The Disorderly Knights) was bought and originally read by my maternal grandmother, who I unfortunately never really met. These books were then read by my own mother, and now by me.
While I’ve enjoyed reading Dunnett’s prose despite the frequently weathered condition of the books (the previous one I read kind of fell in half as I was reading it), it’s amusing (but mostly depressing) to read the opening description of Dunnett’s career. I won’t post the whole passage, just the opening and ending lines, which essentially sum up my frustration:
‘Dorothy Dunnett is married to Alastair Dunnett, Chairman of an oil company and of the Scotsman group of newspapers’
‘Dorothy Dunnett manages to combine the roles of wife and mother with those of an accomplished writer and painter’
The brief ‘biography’ is no biography at all. Instead of focusing on the woman in question, the writer immediately places Dunnett in relation to her husband and his profession, and concludes with the patronising mention that she was able to write alongside raising children and looking after her partner, an ‘achievement’ which countless women in literary fields have managed to do over the centuries. Instead of focusing on the woman herself, the writer marginalises her talents by giving attributes to those around her.
With the biopics Jackie (2016), Spencer (2021), and Blonde (2022), we never quite get to the heart of the main subject either; we’re given the premise of looking into the intimate lives of some of the most iconic women in 20th century western culture. In this case however, the way in which we don’t reach this desired end goal is ultimately more intriguing than if we’d received more expository accounts. The constant pressure of the media intruding into the private echelons of these individuals might initially present a rich opportunity to examine their experiences in more detail through the genre of the biopic.
Refreshingly, however, none of these films fit that genre (a genre which can never be fully objective in its portrayals to begin with) at all. Not neatly, anyway. A lot of recent biopics have tended to focus on male musicians (Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, Stardust, Elvis), but I’ve chosen to home in on the above three films not only because of their rarer female focus, but also because of their intruiguing moulding of the intimate biopic structure into something potentially more alienated and disturbing. Blonde in particular has received criticism for its apparently inaccurate and invasive portrayal of Marilyn Monroe. The critic Mark Kermode, however, sees Andrew Dominik’s work as ‘a horror film which portrays a life in which childhood trauma is repeated’.
If we acknowledge the fact that the sources of inspiration for the films themselves are based on an inevitable level of fiction (Blonde is based on Joyce Carol Oates’ bigographical fiction novel of the same name, whereas Jackie is based on Theordore H. White’s Life magazine interview with the widow conducted shortly after JFK’s death. Spencer was based on a screenplay written by Locke director Steven Knight), then this allows us to view the films as depictions of fantastical, unknowable ‘others’, where the genre of horror is frequently cultivated by using imagery and sound to imagine each woman’s psychological state.
Take the opening scene of Jackie, for example. We begin in silence and darkness as the opening credits roll. We finally open on the titular Jackie (played by Natalie Portman) as she walks through across grass towards her home for the interview, and we begin to hear the unnerving, alien sounds of composer Mica Levi’s ‘Intro’. For those who have watched Jonathan Glazer‘s Under the Skin, the tale of an alien creature trying to understand humanity, which Levi also scored, these spectral violins will be chillingly familiar. Levi’s composition alerts us to Jackie’s impenetrability without words. We are provided with a close-up of her still face, but no expository voiceover is granted. This lack of knowledge creates intrigue about a historical figure we can never truly understand.
Spencer begins in similar fashion, with no sound present as the opening credits appear over a black screen, and we are greeted with words ‘A Fable From a True Tragedy’, firmly cementing us in a tale outside of reality. We are briefly greeted with the sound of birdsong before these noises are overtaken by the cacophony of cars heading towards the royal palace. In both films, silence is a necessary starting point to lull the audience into a sense of ease before they are disturbed by sound, whether diegetic or nondiegetic. Each example represents an incoming invasion of privacy as Jackie prepares to speak about the trauma of her husband’s death and Diana (Kristen Stewart) reluctantly prepares to join the cavalcade of royals that are awaiting her presence.
In Blonde, we get the similarly silent credits as a simple piano motif enters the soundscape, but the ensuing image (which is repeated throughout the film) plays out in extreme slow-motion as we witness Marilyn (Ana de Armas) performing the classic Seven Year Itch shot with her billowing dress in front of a crowd of lusting photographers. Monroe’s figure flashes white as photos are taken, with surrounding background engulfed in darkness. Crew position bright lights in her direction, and then we witness the camera slowly pan around her body, her smile unchanging. With her figure encased in light alongside her exaggerated features as she stares at an unseen camera, she comes across as more ghost than human, especially with the mournful chorus that accompanies the panning shot.
Again, we are provided with an untouchable figure, and one who is made horror-like with the use of music, lighting and exaggerated gesture. We return to this baying crowd numerous times. By the time we near the end of the film where Monroe is about to attend the premiere of Some Like It Hot, the shouting faces have morphed into grotesque, distorted appiritions of pure horror, with mouths distorted into gaping holes. Roger Ebert critic Christy Lemire describes the film as a ‘fantasia of fame, which increasingly becomes a hellscape’. Trauma is expressed through exaggerated, nightmarish imagery and sound. Lemire longs for de Armas’ role ‘to provide her the opportunity to show more of Marilyn’s depth’, but by remaining on an unpenetrable surface, Dominik explores the horrors at the heart of broader subjects of fame and abuses of power.
One of the most powerful uses of sound to create this continuing sense of dread is the leitmotif. In Film Music: A History, James Wierzbicki describes how, in the simple notion of this term, leitmotifs ‘signal the mere presence of whatever character, object, action or emotion with which they are associated’. In their more complex form, however, ‘they indicate serious changes in affect or situation’. The ‘Intro’ composition that we hear at the start of Jackie signifies unspoken trauma as Jackie prepares to relate her pain in the spoken word. Later, during a flashback scene when Jackie leaves her son to talk to the FBI about her husband’s death, we hear Levi’s ‘Lee Harvey Oswald’ playing, we hear the exact same strings, albeit with a lengthier composition of chaotic violins that add a further sense of horror to Jackie’s experience. Both compositions suggest Jackie’s intense anxieties at having to relate the moment of her husband’s death to strangers who know nothing about the intricacies of her life. Each musical example presents a knowing dissent against the traditional notion of the biopic through the medium of non-verbal noise, employing sound to create narrative as opposed to an expository monologue. Even though she ultimately relates her descriptions of the event in the spoken word, we are never allowed to fully comprehend Jackie’s pain (we are granted the briefest of flashbacks showing JFK’s assassination, but this is on screen for little more than a second). Spencer employs the leitmotif in a softer format to personify its eponymous character. We hear the elegant piano composition of Jonny Greenwood’s appropriately titled ‘Spencer’ as we first see her driving in her car. Rather than an expository monologue or voiceover, in this example, music acts as a substitute for character introduction.
Another key aspect in creating audience disorientation and the cultivation of horror elements is found in the j-cut, where audio from the following scene starts playing during the preceding scene; image and sound are not initially synched. When a distressed Marilyn stares into a mirror as the camera pans around her, her expression suddenly changes to an exaggerated, iconic smile as shouts of men uttering her name are heard and she blows a kiss at the mirror. The camera then cuts to the crowd itself. The way in which sound is employed suggest that the voices are plaguing Marilyn’s thoughts as she prepares her public performance, as she hides the pain behind her previous expression. When Diana returns to her darkened, decrepit childhood home and regards an old doll’s house, we start to hear the sounds of children playing from an unknown source, before we cut to a flashback of children playing. By employing sounds before their origin matches with their respective image, the audience is disorientated and unsettled as characters experience internal struggles.
Speaking of homes, domestic spaces represent a key location of paranoia and fear across all three films. The White House that presumably once symbolised a place of safety for Jackie becomes a house of horror. Throughout the film, we witness her giving a tour of the abode, which flicks back and forth between black and white and colour, with the former visual seeming to imply Jackie’s staged performance in front of the camera, and the latter during moment when her public visage begins to slide away. Levi creates a space of horror particularly strongly in her composition ‘Empty White House’ as Jackie walks slowly and silently through the house after her husband’s death, removing her bloodied coat the clothes. When Jackie puts on a record player and we enjoy a brief moment of diegetic music, Jackie stares back at the object like a foreign entity. Rather than focus directly on the moment of JFK’s death, the camera is more interested in its emotional impact on his partner. The hypnotic song continues to play as Jackie showers, with the blood of her husband visible on her back, acting as a visual reminder of her trauma and suffering.
Ghosts are rendered more visible in Spencer through the use of disconcerting imagery. Besides Diana’s conversations with a headless mannequin whom she refers to as her father, we frequently see the physical ghost of a figure representing Anne Boleyn as Diana appears to fall into psychosis. In one particularly disturbing imaginary scene as Diana contemplates eating a bowl of soup, she removes the hated pearl necklace from her neck – the same design of pearls that Charles supposedly gifted to Camilla – and the pearls fall into the soup. She consumes the soup as well as the pearls as tense violins play, and proceeds to vomit the items into a toilet. Shortly after hugging an apparent illusion of her former servant Maggie, Johnny Greenwood’s ‘Delusion/Miracle’ comes into full force as she walks down the royal hall in a beautiful dress that might suggest some measure of calm and tranquillity if not for Levi’s increasingly unsettling tune. Trauma manifests particularly strongly in her nearby past home that she eventually retreats to after enduring tensions in the royal household, with her figure constantly switching between Anne Boleyn’s as she moves between the two homes in the night. Once Diana enters her old place of residence, ‘Home/Lacrimosa’ pipes up and we’re in full horror mode as ominous organs regale her journey through her past life. We witness trippy sequences as Diana changes dresses and ages as she repeatedly runs away; we are not sure what is going on, and Levi’s unsettling violins are not inclined to give us any solace or explanation.
While Marilyn occupies various different spaces across Dominik‘s epic film, none of them offer respite from abuse and horror. In the opening scene where a young Marilyn sits in a car with her mentally unstable mother, she appears to be travelling through a literal hellscape as fire engulfs the background. The unnerving silhouette of her mother playing fur elise evokes spectral imagery, and the fear of her maternal figure seems to occur in Norma’s mind again as she walks down a staircase after witnessing an apparition of her mother shouting ‘cut’ during an audition, even though this apparently nondiegetic sound is subsequently revealed to be diegetic as she sees two men playing the song on a piano. Unanswered phone rings like the one her mother doesn’t answer from a childhood memory are often heard, and trippy images of Marilyn on a plane transitioning to her walking baying crowds are haunted with the repeated, spectral slow-motion image of her posing for the Seven Year Itch shot. Past and present are constantly intertwined, and we are never allowed to see a clear image of the icon’s internal life. Perhaps that’s for the best.
With their constant focus on ghosts, unnerving music and spectral images, Jackie, Spencer and Blonde present compelling examples of an ‘anti-biopic’, where the audience is presented with a miasma of expressive visual and musical elements that divert attention from the figures themselves and provide intrigue from what is not explicitly revealed through the spoken word. Dorothy Dunnett was done a disservice in the way her brief biographical passage diminished her literary career to the role of her husband and family, but the directors here offer a compelling alternative in exploring unknowable lives through the cinematic mediums of sound and image.