Thursday, 19 May 2005
Monster
From the depths of time! Out of the darkest recesses of my hard drive! It's... movie reviews from the past!
(everything after this point was written on 16 May 2004)
What kind of person goes to the movie theater on a beautiful, sunny day to see a dark movie about a serial killer? I guess the type of person who is me.
What kind of person kills? Not once, but repeatedly? I guess that would be a monster.
Aileen (Charlize Theron) is a troubled girl, all too willing to believe that the world could be her oyster even when it continues to spit back nothing but sand. Selby (Christina Ricci) is a troubled girl, well on her way to disillusionment but unwilling to believe anything but the best could be awaiting her. Through an unlikely string of events, the two become friends and lovers.
I've seen Monster criticized for its lack of condemnation for Aileen's actions. Indeed, her chain of killings becomes almost mundane, and her attitude is seldom anything but pragmatic. But it's those critics who are the ones in need of a serious head-check if they have to ask a movie for moral direction.
The media-consuming public expects their news and stories in the form of a neat little package, all wrapped up with a tidy ending and a moral for a bow. But life isn't like that, and this movie unflinchingly throws that into your face.
What Aileen did was beyond wrong, it was evil. But does that make her an evil woman? It's all too easy to group people into "good" or "bad" - how certain are you that you are undeniably good? And if someone else were doing the judging?
Despite everything, it's Aileen who takes full responsibility for what she did - and more. It's "innocent" Selby who proves to be willing to do everything in her power to climb towards her ever-elusive dream goals - including manipulate and ultimately abandon her "true love."
The real story in the movie isn't the sensationalized story of a lesbian hooker gone bad, or of the trail of broken lives she left behind. It's the aching emptiness that is all we're left with when the story is done. Even when the killings were stopped, was anything ever resolved?
4 / 5 - Theron can do more than play with the big girls of drama, they can take lessons from her