Other Reviews in this Series.
Director: Patty Jenkins
Writer: Patty Jenkins
Cast: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern
Runtime: 109 mins.
2003
Monster is based on the true story of Aileen Wuornos (Charlize Theron), a Daytona Beach prostitute who begins killing clients in order to support her runaway girlfriend, Selby (Christina Ricci). At least that's what happened, but it isn't the story.
Typically biopics play up the spectacle of real life events, even when there isn't any spectacle to be found. Certainly Monster had no shortage of spectacle to draw from; the media circus surrounding Aileen's trial dubbed her America's First Female Serial Killer. Yet writer/director Patty Jenkins makes the bold, crucial choice to move away from the spectacle. The first half of the film is more of a romance than anything else. Jenkins ensconces us in the relationship between Aileen and Selby. That is where the true story of Aileen Wuornos lies, and any other approach would lead rapidly to shock schlock and window dressing.
Jenkins does something radical with this film. She sets out to make a serial killer prostitute sympathetic--and she succeeds. When we meet Aileen she's down on her luck, though her defense mechanisms and years of practice have kept her devil-may-care attitude in place. We learn gradually and through voiceover that she was down to her last five dollars, and she felt the need to spend it before killing herself because otherwise that would mean she gave that last guy a blow job for nothing. She takes the fiver to a bar, and in that moment Selby comes into her life like a shock of dangerous voltage. Selby treats Aileen tenderly. Although Aileen doesn't consider herself gay, and finds eros distasteful due to a life of sex work and abuse, she falls into a relationship with Selby as a final thread of hope in an otherwise desolate life. For Selby's part, she has been ostracized from her hometown for trying to kiss another girl, and has since been attempting to exercise her agency despite the watchfulness of her aunt who has reluctantly taken her in.
The relationship sparks opposing forces in the two women: for Selby it's about breaking out, and for Aileen it's about settling down. Aileen tries to go straight and find a socially acceptable job. She quickly discovers that the world carries no opportunity for people like her.
Earlier in the film Aileen takes a client to get some extra cash so she and Selby can rent a hotel room. He takes her to a secluded place, and before the transaction takes place he insists on finishing his drink and chatting. "Women like you," he says, "I love em. And I hate em. I love em and I hate em!" He then knocks her out and rapes her. This is the first man Aileen kills, out of self-defense and a deep well of rage.
That interaction is emblematic of the film's treatise on gender and sexuality. It's all bound up in the madonna/whore complex. Men love prostitutes... yet they heartlessly dispose of them. Society needs sex workers... yet it refuses to support them in any way. The world is committed to disappearing Aileen... until she becomes exploitable.
Monster generates sympathy for Aileen because we see that she does what she does for her twisted version of love and hope. We also see that the world of men blockades and perverts her any way they can. Her only friend, Thomas (Bruce Dern), a drunk and forgotten Vietnam war vet, understands this about her. He understands that for the underprivileged, the American Dream is broken.
Yet the film also refuses to commit the misstep of letting Aileen's actions off the hook. Jenkins makes a point of treating Aileen's victims with ever-increasing sympathy, proportional to how out of control Aileen has become. She needs to feel that all men who want her services are corrupt and broken souls, but she discovers some who are kindhearted, and some who are victims of their own circumstances. Thus Monster forces us to confront our values by presenting Aileen as a tragic figure, further complicated by submerging her victims in tragedy as well. The only point of view that the film seems to have little patience for is that of Selby's family: Her aunt sits her down and explains that her prostitute friend is a lost soul because she has made the easy choices in life, and that if everyone made the easy choices they would all be hookers and druggies. America is lousy with that haughty, moralistic, hyperprivileged perspective, and it is exactly what leads us to ignore the structural deficiencies that produce intense personalities like Aileen's. Why fix a broken system that benefits you if you can just blame the individuals who have fallen victim to it?
Monster is a film, not a screed, and its central performance is what makes it all work. Charlize Theron is unrecognizable as Aileen Wuornos. I knew she was in this movie, but still wondered whether I was mistaken. She transforms into Aileen. The make-up, prosthetics, speech patterns, gestures--they are all utterly distinctive, and never superfluous. Aileen's cadence is reminiscent of The Dude's, if The Dude were filled with an immense fury and brokenness. She is a master of deflection, repression, and aggression. Every heinous act and tender gesture is rooted in Theron's studied and ostentatious performance. It is legitimately one of the great screen performances I have ever seen, and Theron's Academy Award is entirely justified.
Monster is not flawless. The aforementioned voiceover is of questionable necessity, and there is a slight narrative lull as Aileen escalates her killings and she and Selby begin to argue in circles. But it may be a masterpiece regardless--an all-time great performance buffeted by restrained directing, incisive writing, and editing and sound design that work in tandem to make the critical moments crackle. Frankly, I can't believe I had never heard of this movie until specifically looking into Jenkins' filmography. Although that may be a personal shortcoming, I can't help but wonder whether its legacy has suffered from the cultural tendency to bury stories by women about women. Either way, it is a great injustice that in the thirteen years since her masterful and self-assured debut, Jenkins hasn't released another feature film. Her Wonder Woman comes out this year, and having watched Monster will make its failures sting all the more. Jenkins is clearly an artist who has given a lot of thought to the ways that men dispel the agency of women, and she surely will have tried to inject as much of that as possible into her superhero film, but the cruel irony is that her vision will likely be gobbled up by the profit-mandated masculine-dominated megafranchise system.
4 / 5 BLOBS
No comments:
Post a Comment