MONSTER (2003)

[agate]

While watching this movie I kept wondering what on earth was wrong with the main character’s face. Later I learned that the actress, Charlize Theron, had a lot of work done on her face for this part–dentures, etc. The effect, however, is that of a character who is making unnatural grimaces through much of the movie. I kept wondering when we were going to find out what neurological disorder was afflicting her.

The problem may be that the shots of her face weren’t monitored carefully enough for consistency.

Aside from this criticism, I thought this was an excellent movie.

Lee (based on a real woman, who was executed and thought to be America’s first female serial killer) is a hooker in Florida who has been kicked around to the point where she’s almost totally cynical–except when it comes to her developing relationship with the naive and trusting Selby, a younger woman who adores her and follows her while fending off her concerned middle-class family.

Lee’s cynical philosophy is never stated but it is definitely implied in her actions and in some of her remarks. She says that as a hooker her job is to do whatever the john wants. She accepts this as a given, as of course she must.

Sometimes the john wants to hurt her. She has to accept this too. Sometimes a john might even want to kill her, and that is how she kills the first man–in self-defense. After that it may have dawned on her that in her situation any man is a potential threat to her life. It is the world she lives in, however, and she sees no way out of it. She’s apparently an older hooker and knows she may be too old and down on her luck to succeed in becoming trained for another occupation.

She gradually moves toward killing johns who are particularly menacing to killing those who may be innocent of any intent to hurt her. In the end, all men who put themselves into a situation where they are hiring hookers are capable of killing her, as she sees it, and she sees no need to take a chance on giving any of them the benefit of the doubt.

After all, she has to do whatever they want.

Apparently using this weird and terrible logic, she moves toward her own destruction. She becomes increasingly drunk and confused but she manages to finish off several men whom she picks up on the road with a hard-luck story.

The movie opens with Lee as a child who has trusting dreams of being beautiful and admirable.

This is one of the saddest movies I’ve seen in a long time.