Film Review: Monster (2003)

Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs has shown how one can win an Oscar by playing a serial killer. Twelve years later, the same feat was repeated by Charlize Theron with her role in Monster, a 2003 crime drama written and directed by Patty Jenkins.

In the film, Theron plays Aileen Wuornos, a real-life person who created a lot of public interest after the media branded her "America's first female serial killer". The plot, which is set in Florida, begins in 1989 when Wuornos, who has spent almost her entire adult life supporting herself through street prostitution and is in desperate need of money, contemplates suicide. Instead, she decides to visit a lesbian bar where she would meet a young woman named Selby Wall (played by Christina Ricci). Although there are differences in age and Wuornos initially rejects being gay, she soon becomes protective of Selby, who had come to Florida after being chased from her Ohio home by parents who could not tolerate her lesbianism. The two women begin a passionate relationship and begin to live together, with Aileen supporting them through prostitution. One night, while being attacked and raped by one of her clients, she takes a gun and shoots him. This is the first in a series of killings of men that Aileen would later justify as self-defence, even when one of the victims (played by Scott Wilson) happens to be a kind-hearted man who genuinely wanted to help her. Selby is initially oblivious to what is going on, but at the end, she confronts Aileen, who admits to the killings. Selby leaves her, and Aileen is soon afterwards arrested.

Charlize Theron has deserved her Oscar, if not for the quality of her performance, then certainly for the unprecedented effort to make the character she portrayed as close to the real person as possible. That included great pains to achieve a physical resemblance to Aileen Wuornos. Theron, who is considered to be one of the most beautiful Hollywood actresses of her generation, deliberately gained weight, took prosthetics, and applied a special kind of make-up in order to make her character as unglamorous as possible. All that was accompanied by an intense portrayal of a woman who goes through an emotional roller coaster – from suicidal despair in the beginning, brief moments of bliss with Selby, murderous rage triggered by violent clients and, finally, a feeling of betrayal near the end. Theron is complemented in her performance by the young Christina Ricci, who plays her character (which is partly fictional and partly based on Wuornos' real-life girlfriend Tyria Moore) with great skill.

However, all that cannot overcome the fact that Monster is, at the end of the day, just another "Oscar bait" film. Jenkins, who had prepared for the film by visiting Wuornos in prison before her 2002 execution, was probably aware that the audience would know at least a bit or two about the actual killings. So she decided to fill the blanks by reinterpreting her series of murders as a consequence of a lifetime of abuse, starting from her own dysfunctional family and continuing through a lifetime on the street where she would experience all the worst from men and gradually accumulate resentment that would explode in the most violent way possible. Although Jenkins never condones her acts, she implicitly suggests that at least some of her victims deserved their fate and that Wuornos was some sort of avenger for all the abused and exploited women in the world. This impression is especially difficult to avoid near the end, when the character of Selby is portrayed as a sort of Judas. Those who like to read between the lines might even find a little political context, with suggestions that Selby's family is made up of bigoted right-wingers. There is even a surreal scene when Wuornos attempts to get a regular job and turn her life around, only to be mercilessly mocked, which could be interpreted as an attack on the brutal nature of modern capitalism and social divisions that come with it. That, together with a sympathetic portrayal of lesbianism that represented a middle finger to the conservative ideology of the Bush administration, guaranteed that Monster would not only win awards, but be worshipped by critics. While Theron earned praise, Jenkins spent the next decade and a half working mostly on television before getting the opportunity to depict a more suitable feminist icon in Wonder Woman.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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