*** (out of ****)
Starring Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Scott Wilson, and Kaitlin Riley
Directed & written by Patty Jenkins
2003
111 min R
Life was not good to Aileen Wuornos, a real-life murderer who was executed in Florida a few years ago. Her childhood was wasted suffering the kind of abuses that repeating in their entirety might cost me half my readers. By the age of thirteen she had already given up a child for adoption and suffered disfigurements that require the actress playing her to wear prosthetics. By the time we meet her, all she has ever known is rape, beatings, prostitution, beer, and cigarettes. Patty Jenkins’ film “Monster” is an intense, straight-ahead, and sometimes gruesome account of Aileen’s killing spree, although I don’t think the words “Aileen Wuornos” are ever actually spoken in it.
The chief relationship of “Monster” is between Aileen (Charlize Theron) and the woman she meets when she ducks into a gay bar to get out of the rain. Her name is Selby (Christina Ricci) and together they form an odd little family as they roam Florida broke, unemployed, and essentially homeless. Aileen is the breadwinning husband (via prostitution), the tidy wife as she ferociously scrubs away evidence, the authoritarian parent as she demands to know where Selby has been, and the embarrassing sibling as Selby ditches her to ride roller coasters with mullet-headed girls. Selby is as punky as a teenager, as whiny as a child, and her neediness is almost feline. Her arm is broken when we first meet her, which she insists prevents her from finding work, yet long after it heals the thought of her getting a job never seems to cross either of their minds.
There’s a Tool song about child abuse whose chorus goes “do unto others what has been done to you.” While Aileen never abuses her surrogate spouse-child the way her parents did, she, like a parent, pontificates endlessly about her cracked worldview. We can never quite shake the suspicions of Selby’s family that Aileen is not really bisexual, but an opportunist. They do become lovers, at least intermittently, but Aileen’s childhood is so hopelessly screwed up that a sexual element with her offspring might just be how she thinks a family works. In the same way we’re never sure what Aileen wants of Selby, we’re never sure how much Selby knows about Aileen. She encourages Aileen to sell herself and is too much in awe—or disgust—to stand up to the other woman when the depths of Aileen’s evil gradually become apparent.
South African actress Charlize Theron’s performance has received no end of praise, and deservedly so. She is immersed and invisible in the role, cadaverous in makeup, always kind of creepy, and sympathetic in her attempts to rise above her broken nature. And fiery, absolutely fiery. Her Aileen is wholly unlike any other character I’ve seen her play (she is the wife/girlfriend to the male lead in “The Italian Job,” “The Devil’s Advocate,” “Reindeer Games,” “Legend of Bagger Vance”). Theron is sometimes mistaken for actress Ashley Judd and her career is taking an opposite direction, from thin, big-budget, eye candy roles to complex independent movies. Her narration throughout “Monster” is wholly cynical and vaguely reminiscent of Raymond Chandler. Ricci is also impressive and effortless as a messed up, confused kid. My description of their relationship does not do it justice, and is as fascinating and palpable as the one in “Lost in Translation,” although not nearly as pleasant.
The movie is not a mystery, not “Silence of the Lambs,” and contains no clues, no police procedure, no investigation, no cat-and-mouse with the law. It is the lives of two desperate women through a string of motel rooms, stolen cars, invaded homes, paper bag food, and profuse usage of the f-word. The sloppiness of Aileen’s crimes—she picks up men and shoots them—is not so much the result of stupidity as a cynicism so great that it borders on madness. The impression we get is that Aileen has no masterplan, no goals, no expectations beyond a few days, and no belief that anything she does will be of any consequence in such a cold, uncaring world. After meeting Selby she tries to go straight. Without skills or references, she way, way overshoots her potential by trying for secretarial and office work instead of retail or sacking groceries. Her interview scenes play like “Erin Brockovich” with claws. There is a vague rationale to how she picks her victims, trying to convince herself that they are child-abusers and adulterers, but her methodology is as ramshackle as the rest of her life.
“Monster” has no illusions about Aileen’s guilt. She has done things which are pure evil and undeniably malicious. She is given the opportunity to do right and she does not. I suspect few will be surprised that her one loyalty is ultimately betrayed. Perhaps Selby, whose life is arguably no less screwed up than Aileen’s simply because she has been on the run with her, is able, unlike Aileen, to do the right thing despite all life has dealt her. Perhaps she is just self-interested. But “Monster” does ask us to consider that many of Aileen’s desires—to be loved, loyal, and to have a family, of sorts—are not as alien and monstrous as we might think.
Finished February 9th, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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