Monster | Review

Jenkins illustrates how America’s first female serial killer never received a life raft.

This year’s Boy’s Don’t Cry Oscar entry is an absorbing piece of indie film, with a narrative itinerary that actually makes the viewer empathize with, out of all people — a serial killer. In what will be regarded as Charlize Theron’s best career move ever, first time director Patty Jenkins’ Monster is about how love and hate can determine the path of one deeply fractured soul.

Many critics, including myself, have already crowned Theron as best of 2003, not bad for the girl who high-kicked her way into film with the unforgettable cat-fight routine in 2 Days in the Valley. In her film producer credit, she totally immerses herself in the title role, by psychologically and physically getting into her chaotic spirit and frame of mind of Aileen Wuornos. The result is a commanding screen performance and voice-over narration that accurately captures Wuornos’ mannerisms, her speech patterns and mental rage that combined a ball of hope and hate.

Thanks to a complete archive of letters that Wuornos wrote while awaiting her fate on death row and that Jenkins got a hold of, the viewer is entitled to a comprehensive look at how this killer’s life was, at one time, considered a life worth living.

The story takes place moments before the fateful encounter where someone actually cared for a person whom no one cared for and some motel room romance perforates the screen, but when hooking is no longer an option and the collection of cars and money runs out the fairytale ending and lifetime of abuse both come to a halt. Jenkins unflinching look not only exposes how society tends to turn their backs on weakened souls but rather than pass an easy judgment she makes things slightly difficult making it hard to villainize a person who was a victim in their own right.

Inside a setting of cheap motels and the landscape of Florida’s freeways and back roads there is a end-of-the-road feel to the picture that lends itself to the milieu of the characters and makes us understand the desperation sensed in the relationship between Theron and her savior, lesbian lover Selby played by Christina Ricci (Anything Else). Jenkins relates the intensity of this relationship to the grim outlook of the picture developing a paradox between roller-skating romance and a first kiss to sequences of extreme brutality such as the factual, cold-blood murders of her male customers. Only prior knowledge to the viewing can better explain why the monster became a monster, as the majority of Wuornos’ own life is left out of the script, however, Theron’s performance explains that the word “trauma” and Wuornos synonymous with one another.

The use of close-up shots humanizes what most would consider the devil and also proves what a terrific job the make-up department did. While Monster is not the most engrossing drama this year it certainly is an incredible character and relationship study, and we can praise Jenkins for depicting her in a light so different that it not only challenges the viewer but proves that love should be an emotion available for under privileged people as well. See you at the Oscars Miss Theron!

Rating 3 stars