Humanizing a Killer

Rating: 7/10 (27 July 2017)

One of the hardest things to do is made a typically unsympathetic character sympathetic. Monster deals with a famous serial killer from the early 1990's who believed she was killing for good reasons. Finding a way to write a direct such a character so that the audience doesn't automatically despise your lead is a difficult thing to do. Patty Jenkins and Charlize Theron found a way to do just that with Aileen Wuornos. The story deals with Aileen, who has had a rough life to say the least. She's been a prostitute since an early teen, physically abused by her family, and has been homeless for years ever since being kicked out of her home. Just by hearing that, there's at least some sense of pity I feel for her. This all leads to her meeting Selby Wall (based on Tyria Moore). The film portrays both of them at a rough patch in their life, which makes it all the more timely that they meet each other. After a relatively sweet romance for the first 40 minutes of the film, Aileen begins her crime spree. We may never know exactly how it all went down, but if she originally killed first victim because he was raping her and likely going to murder her, then I can feel a lot of sympathy towards her. As I said, Jenkins makes a choice to present Aileen as a victim herself, but that changes about halfway through. But I really appreciate the balance Jenkins gives to the crimes. They aren't faceless crimes without purpose, she's doing them for love and because her life is close to worthless without the money she's getting. By no means does that dismiss her from having any guilt, as no one should be murdered, but you can begin to understand her mindset just a little bit. It doesn't hurt that you have a great actress like Charlize Theron to build your film around, as she earned an Oscar for her turn as Aileen. It was well deserved I may add. Overall, Monster is a fascinating movie to get inside of a murderous psychopath, but it's more the moments of humanity in Aileen that stand out the most.
7.4/10