O Mistério de Marilyn Monroe: Gravações Inéditas

Narratively this is absolutely all over the place. No structure, no new information, nothing revelatory at all. It careers around regurgitating stuff we already knew, hints at a few things but is such a mess it never even bothers to provide any real interesting information. Crap, even for Netflix.

An intriguing documentary which uses the real life voice recordings of Marilyn Monroe and the many people who knew her both before and after she became a mega star. Though we ultimately know how this tragic story ends, Marilyn is still ravishing and lovely enough to hold our attention. When one sees her remastered film clips in this documentary, it's easy to understand why the world fell in love with her and why she continues to captivate so many to this day.

Nothing at all new here, though the tapes of her voice are touching, though the gimmick of actors lip-syncing the audio tapes of other voices is a poor decision and distracting. This absolutely gorgeous woman was damaged goods due to her horrid childhood and was used by many in wrong ways to succeed in show business, but she bares some responsibility for that part too, but she had no say in her upbringing making her chronically insecure with barely an ounce of self confidence, though she could turn on for a camera and man, was she ever photogenic. For better or worse, she did indeed live a short and sensational life with huge stardom, marriages to one of the biggest sports heroes in history along with one of our greatest playwrights. We will never, ever know the details of her connections to the Kennedys, but she was clearly closely associated with them as has been talked about since the 1960's. Some of the speculation here of how she died is valid, but so is suicide, the legal reason for her death, but no one then or now is talking, which in itself is interesting. She was fascinating and she was in a few good films, though none come close to the heights of Some Like It Hot. This film seems just like some cheap cash in by the author of the book Goddess, but at least we get to see some pictures and video of her, which is nice, but there is not even nearly enough of that for one of the most photographed women in history.

There isn't much in this documentary that warrants a distinct visual approach. As many rightfully remarked, the material is befitting a podcast more than a Netflix piece. To be honest, the actors' lip-syncing to the tapes didn't add anything. Also, the tapes pose a few relevant questions but none that insist on a deeper study. All the information we see (or hear) in this piece is, more or less, already out there in some form or the other. It's always blissful to see the charismatic Monroe on screen, and her presence is genuinely undeniable. But I couldn't figure her out as a person here, let alone understand more about her untimely death.

Marilyn Monroe was beautiful, talented, smart and funny. She also had a lot of problems. She was a good actress and her best movie was Some Like It Hot. Who knows what would have happened to her if she hadn't gotten involved with the Kennedys. She had a history of drug and alcohol use too. This is a really good documentary. One worth watching.