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Winning Ugly

Charlize Theron makes an amazing Oscar-slumming transformation to become a Monster.

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Aileen “Lee” Wuornos’ descent into the psychopathic rut that turned her into America’s first female serial killer has been argued and examined in books, articles, a made-for-TV movie and two documentaries by British loudmouth Nick Broomfield. This winter, it’s the subject of a mostly sympathetic biopic on the Florida hooker who murdered seven men in the late 1980s and was put to death herself in 2002.


But that’s not the raison d’être of Monster, writer-director Patty Jenkins’ somewhat fictionalized account of the last days of Wuornos’ free life. This movie is all about Charlize Theron’s transformation from one of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful women on the planet into the spitting (literally) image of Wuornos, from the prosthetic teeth to the extra 30 pounds to the mirthless smile she deploys to devastating effect. Though true-crime stories of this ilk (especially ones from Florida, the sun in the center of the white trash universe) are intellectual porn of the highest grade, this movie was made to showcase an acting project of titanic scope.


Theron produced and relentlessly promoted this low-budget film, which features Christina Ricci (as Wuornos’ clueless girlfriend Selby) in the only other significant role. Theron hired a phalanx of makeup artists who affected a virtual wax-museum recreation of Wuornos on Theron’s chiseled body, right down to the bad blonde dye job and the freckled, eyebrow-free face. Meanwhile, she fashioned an entire language of tics, gestures and expressions that are both grotesquely fascinating and unnervingly touching.


All in all, it’s one of the most elaborate, ornamental screen impersonations in recent memory, and Theron’s stab at a Hilary Swank-ian career save is just plain delicious to film geeks. We haven’t seen anything close to this since Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York, and he was making up his character. Some have whined about the recent spate of hot actresses glamming it down to play real people, but when this much sheer effort and hard work is put into the transformation, no matter how disingenuous her motives, it’s impossible not to be awed by the Horatio Alger factor. She wants that little gold statue, and she’ll be damned if being pretty is going to stop her.


Theron has made more bad choices than Britney Spears, Rush Limbaugh and Grady Little combined during her Hollywood career, but she propels herself back to relevance here—not necessarily by the quality of the film, but by the sheer weight of her will to be noticed. Everything else is lost in her wake, including Jenkins’ pivotal ideas about Wuornos’ culpability (they’re fairly close to the apologist tactics of her defense team: abused woman killed out of fear and hatred, very bad but understandable, we wish you hadn’t killed her).


The rest of the film is a dehydrated Christmas tree that can’t possibly support the weight of the star on top. Jenkins writes individual scenes quite well; Lee and Selby first fall in love at a roller rink to the strains of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and Wuornos’ attempts to find respectable work (which may or may not have actually happened, since they’re based on letters written from jail) are tragicomic gems. Ricci is a remarkably versatile actor who has little trouble in this wide-eyed, immature part, with her stubby fingers and moon-shaped face contrasting compellingly with Theron’s thick, hulking killer. Their mutual manipulation eventually becomes a game of chicken, with Wuornos extending her killing spree at her young girlfriend’s behest.


But Jenkins also embraces the more-is-more ethos of her star, mostly to Monster’s detriment. There are far too many voiceovers of thoughts that are much more articulate than anything that probably ever went through Wuornos’ damaged mind. The pounding score that accompanies pretty much every moment of importance also seems unnecessary, but it hardly ever stops.


Jenkins never really captures the nihilist bent that characterizes the best movies of this sort. It’s hard to feel properly hopeless about the world when your killer is all but certain to get an Oscar nomination and a bunch of great new scripts to consider. But it’s also simply impossible to deny the naked appeal of Theron’s bleached-blonde ambition. After all, she’s only doing what comes naturally: Isn’t attention the reason everybody gets into acting in the first place? Don’t hate her because she’s not beautiful.

MONSTER, ***, Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Rated R