One of the best films of 2003 (possible spoilers!)

Rating: 9/10 (29 January 2004)

`Monster' is based on the true story of Eileen Wournos, America's most high profile female serial killer. The keys words in that sentence are 'based on', as they should be in any movie that aspires to tell the true story of someone's life. Walking in to the theater, I knew only that Wournos was a hooker who shot her johns, and that she was responsible for a number of killings before she was caught in 1990 and put to death in Florida in 2002 for her crimes. `Monster', as so many movies before it, wants to portray the events of someone's life, events that in this case only an executed killer and a murder victim were privy to. The movie opens with Wournos wandering in to a bar one evening and meeting her true love. She has not begun killing yet; she is merely another disheveled prostitute, and has been since she was 13. Inside the bar she meets Shelby (Christina Ricci), a lesbian who is just as insecure as Eileen (who is called Lee in the film), only she displays her fears openly rather than hiding them behind false bravado and swagger as Lee does. The two unlikely partners begin to fall in love, and Lee goes out one day to make enough money to get them started on a life together. However, she is picked up by the wrong john, and she is knocked out. She comes to naked, tied to the car. After a brutal series of events, she breaks free and kills her attacker, and discovers a hacksaw in his trunk; had she not shot him, he would undoubtedly have killed her. She lives in fear for a while, but soon realizes that the police are not looking for her. A lifetime of abuse and rape explodes inside of her, and after a brief attempt to go straight (which is met with painful skepticism from the working world), she exorcizes her demons by killing more men who should be home with their wives rather than in a car in the woods with her. She hides her actions from Shelby, who she now lives with. But living with a hooker is not easy, and the two quarrel constantly. The film is very effective at showing their relationship; how lust turned to love, and how it all came crashing down. Was Eileen Wournos a monster? Yes, undoubtedly. But she was also a victim herself, a tired concept that gains new strength here. We see Lee commit horrible crimes in the name of love, to give her lover money; in one harrowing scene she kills a man who does not want sex but only wants to help someone in need and offers his son's old room in a house he shares with his wife. I enjoy true crime books, trying to understand why people do what they do (all the while understanding that some people are just evil through and through), but I also know a lot of people who have had horrible childhoods but learned from them and became better people. Wournos truly had no right to kill the men she did, with the exception of the man who would have killed her, but the movie does something no book or movie has ever done better: it makes us see her as a person, to empathize with her. By the end, I was surprisingly emotional, so good is `Monster' at painting a three-dimensional portrait of a bad person who doesn't see herself as bad, and who can justify all of her actions. We feel for her just as much as we fear her. Charlize Theron plays Wournos, and it is a real shame that so much press has been devoted to the make-up tricks she used in the role. Yes, she gained thirty pounds and shows no glamour, especially in her nude scenes; and, yes, make-up was used to freckle her face and make her a dead ringer for the real-life Eileen. But the acting is all Theron, and it would be unfortunate if it is seen as a camera trick. Theron gives the best performance of her career, but that is no great achievement; with the exception of `The Cider House Rules', most of her films, like `Reindeer Games' or `The Italian Job', have just required her to look pretty and flash a little skin, something she does very well. But what is amazing here is that she gives one of the best performances I have seen in a very long time, not just compared to her earlier work. In many ways `Monster' plays like `Boys Don't Cry', an effective love story set against horrific events, and it is every bit that film's equal. Theron is the reason; she inhabits the role, and shows fearlessness alongside a breathtaking amount of talent. Ricci has been somewhat overlooked, but she is amazing as well, using her eyes to portray a woman who has more strength than she knows. She has one amazing scene in a bar where she channels Lee and takes on her attributes in front of some strangers, and the film would not work as a love story if we don't believe both leads, regardless of how strong Theron's performance is. Both women deserve Oscar nominations, if not the awards themselves. `Monster' is one of the best films of the year, a movie that sidesteps numerous pitfalls to tell a sad, violent, and affecting story. Maybe it happened this way, and maybe it didn't; the dead cannot speak to defend themselves. But without stooping to bleeding heart liberalism or exploitation, the movie tells a tale no one who sees it should ever be able to shake.