Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
Directed by: Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill. Produced by: Jo Human. Director of Photography: Joan Churchill. Edited by: Claire Ferguson. Music by: Rob Lane. Released by: Lantern Lane Entertainment in assoc. with HBO/Cinemax Films. Country of Origin: USA. 89 min. Not Rated. With: Aileen Wuornos & Nick Broomfield.
In her last interview before her 2002 execution in Florida, convicted murderer
Aileen Wuornos calls into question not only her sanity but also the use of capital
punishment. She claims her mind is controlled by radio waves and that she will be
taken away with angels on a space ship. And when she angrily blames the police
for the seven killings and then framing her, her wide eyes have a blank, vacant
stare. Clearly she is unhinged. Incredibly, she is judged mentally competent by the
state to be executed.
Director Nick Broomfield plays an important role in the film. Not only does
Wuornos view him as a friend, but he is also subpoenaed to provide evidence
against her former attorney during an appeals hearing. There, footage from his
Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1993) features the lawyer,
“an ex-hippie out of his depth,” smoking a joint. As in the earlier film, there is
also an interview of whistle blower cop Brian Jarvis. Officers who had
investigated the murders that Wuornos had been found guilty of had also colluded
with Wuornos’s lover, Tyria Moore, to sell their story to Hollywood. The officers
were reprimanded; Jarvis and his family received death threats.
Broomfield forthrightly lays out the facts of her life and focuses on her motivation
for changing her plea of self-defense. He journeys to Troy, MI, Wuornos’s home
town, where at 13 she had a baby, became homeless, and a prostitute. Also interviewed is her estranged biological mother.
This compassionate documentary should be of strong interest to viewers of the
previous Wuornos film or the current Monster. However, it is much more
successful in detailing the horrific and incredible circumstances of her life than the
latter. This truly is a case of truth being stranger than fiction. KT
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