I think I would have liked Monster more if I didn't know that it was based on actual events. I liked the film's ideas but somehow never totally connected with the material on an emotional level. I think that the reason is that I saw the pictures of Aileen Wuornos on death row, and read reviews of a documentary that Nick Broomfield had made about her. I think that I might have been more receptive to Jenkin's message if the protagonist of her film was a totally fictional character, and was thus had nothing to compare it to.
The movie's thesis is that Aileen Wuornos, a serial killer who was executed in Florida a year before the film was released, was doomed from the day she was born. Despite her crimes, she is essentially a good person, but she is uneducated and was never given anything approaching a fair chance or lucky break. Born in Michigan, her father was a serial child molester who commited suicide in prison, her mother abandonded her and she was raised by her grandparents, who she claimed were abusive. She gave birth at age 14, giving her son up for adoption. The child's father was probably a john she picked up prostuting.
This is an unbelivably tragic story. And the odd thing is that the film doesn't tell us much of this- the above paragraph is a summery of what I read on Wikipedia. Jenkins' strangely picks up the story after Wuornos has hitchhiked to Flordia. This deletion is a critical mistake- we see that Wournos is wounded, but we don't totally understand why. Later on, when the director wants us to sympathize with her, this backstory would have made it much easier.
To summerize Jenkins' film: On a day she plays on commiting suicide, Wuornos meets Selby (Christina Ricci) a young lesbian from a evangelic household. The two strike up a romance and Aileen becomes truly devoted to and borderline obcessed with Selby- like an adolecent crush. While prostituting to get money for a date, Aileen picks up a sadist who rapes and plans to murder her. She manages to kill him in self defense. After she convinces Selby to run off with her, she tries to get a job, but can't- she has no skills and has never worked legitamentally in her life. In order to get money to live on, she poses as a prostitue and kills the johns, taking their money and their car. She is eventually caught, and is executed, bitter to the end.
What I liked best about the movie was its demonstration about the plieght of people in the lower depths of our society. The film's version of Aileen is an essentially good person who never given anythign she would need to be a productive member of society. Yet that society expects her to be self-sustaing individual and gives her no help, only abuse and exploitation.
Where the movie fails in its portrayal of the love story (or whatever it is) between Aileen and Selby. Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal, but Ricci comes off as fake and unbeleivably naive. I was not surprised to learn that Selby is a fictional composite of several characters.
As I said earlier, the movie would have been easier to beleive and get into if I knew that it was fiction, that Jenkins could make her argument without the audince worrying about the truth of the story she frames that argument with. By leaving out much of the tragedity of the backstory, we don't get the total motivation that left Aileen this way, so we never feel anything on the gut level. Instead of getting involved in her pleight, we think "I wonder if that actually happend."
I should probably say as I close that a lot of people liked this more than I did (my oft-quoted fave critic Ebert named it was the best film of 2003). I don't think its quiet that good, but I can understand why some people feel it is. But I can't help but think that what we needed was a more realistic approach, perhaps in the vien of De Sica, instead of the Hollywood classisim we get here. However, the tragedity of the film's version of Ailieen is haunting- what loss to society, with such a good heart going to total waste.
Monster (2003)