I got to Monster a little late, so I missed anything that happened before she was drinking in a bar chatting with Christina Ricci. Additionally, since I wanted to get seated as quickly as possible with minimum fuss, I took a seat in the third row from the screen, so the film took most of my vision up.
When you get a piece of information that contradicts what you know, the headshrinking lot say that you're experiencing cognitive dissonance, a lack of harmony between what you believe to be true and some new information to the contrary. I saw Charlize Theron on the screen, knew her to be Charlize Theron, knew her to be extremely hot, and yet she was so fucking nasty. So the makeup's really good. She looks like Aileen Wuornos as I know her from Nick Broomfield's documentary about Nick Broomfield, Aileen Wuornos: the Selling of a Serial Killer. Acted much like her, too. Very nice performance. I tried really hard to see Charlize Theron in that getup, and I never could. So instead I lusted after Christina Ricci, whose head I perceived through third row seating distortion to be a perfect pearlescent sphere inset with mutant watermelon sized eyes. Hot.
Fuckability aside, the film's good. It plays out as a sort of lesbian Butch and Sundance, as all the events are told within the context of Wuornos' relationship with Ricci (named Selby in the movie, Tyria in real life). Aileen whacks some dudes to get money to keep her honey living the high life in a series of slummy motels and rentals. In one of the few scenes which doesn't feature Wuornos, Ricci goes out to a bar and flirts with some ladies of the dykish persuasion and tells one of Wuornos' stories as her own. Wuornos, though physically absent, is the focus of the scene. And once Aileen makes it back on screen, she has a fit about Ricci going out in an incriminating stolen car without her. The end of the film briefly shows Wuornos' Mumia-style courtroom outbursts and completely ignores the bizarre adoption coda to the story. It focuses instead on Ricci's complicity with the police in obtaining a confession from Wuornos. In the end, Wuornos is led off to the gas chamber declaring that a whole bunch of feel-good aphorisms ("where there's life there's hope," etc) are untrue as she's enveloped in a white light.
And so the problem with the film, which this review from the St. Petersburg Times argues, is that it romanticizes Wuornos. She's played up as a sort of female "male antihero" killing people for his/her woman.
Sometimes this agenda obscures the facts. There's a scene in which Wuornos poses with a new gun she's obtained, and it's one of those freaking huge phallic deals with a massive barrel. She checks herself out in the mirror, looking deadly and dangerous with her new supersized Dirty Harry related program activity. This I believe to be factually untrue. All of the murders were committed with a .22, which I believe to be a wee little deal and not the hand cannon that the newly lesbian Charlize delights in demonstrating.
The killings are another matter. The only surviving witness to these was Wuornos herself, so it's hard to say how accurate the film is in its presentation of the murders. Wuornos apparently always claimed that the first victim attempted to rape her, as is depicted in the film. Wuornos also claimed that the others raped or attempted to rape her, but then recanted this story near the end of her life. Wuornos is a problematic witness, though the film decides to believe her story regarding her first killing, which is depicted as self defense against a brutal rape.
In the others, the film has Wuornos trying to work out a rationalization as she's about to commit murder. One of these has Wuornos suggesting that a john is an incestuous pedophile because he wants her to call him "Daddy." When Wuornos blurts out this insane leap of logic, the audience I was with laughed. It's an interesting way to present the murders, though, to have Wuornos working out her cover story as she's committing murder. She's so witless it's charming.
Additionally, when Aileen tries to find normal employment, nobody will give her a job as she has no resume and no experience and is, generally, really freaky. But it's amusing to see her try and dress up and then lose it at a job interview (the story that Ricci ultimately plagiarizes). And so we feel sympathy for Wuornos. And it's kinda funny.
And seven men are dead, ho ho ho. But a film doesn't need to be a moral lesson, and I didn't leave the film thinking of Wuornos as a moral exemplar, or even as an innocent corrupted by an evil society or a horrible life. With the exception of the over the top ending, I enjoyed the film and found it engaging, if a bit too complementary.
But I guess she's going to have to be appealing to the audience if, like Hannibal Lecter, she's going to sustain a movie franchise. We can only hope that one day we'll get to see Freddy vs Jason vs Aileen. Or even Aileen vs Predator. Anything so long as Christina Ricci gets naked and is violated by a tentacled demon. Or some plant's malicious vines. How about an octopus?
For a good recap of the real Aileen Wuornos story, check out The Crime Library.
By the way, Mumia did it. Go find another fucking cause.
Posted by mattb at January 28, 2004 02:12 AM