Review of Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003) by Paul Z — 02 Nov 2010

Nick Broomfield, a reflexive filmmaker, using a minimum crew, grabs the title's famed personality and important political context in this film, which was to be the peak of his observations on the filmmaker as accomplice and his original documentary on Aileen Wuornos is introduced as evidence during a new trial depicted in this one, he himself called as a witness. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer comes to stand, very alarmingly, as the final wailings from a woman struggling to battle her own commodification. Not even Charlize Theron's striking portrayal of the accused can rival the entrancing real thing, whose premeditated admissions of regret hardly mask her cancerous rage at a life span of abuse, oppression, exploitation and neglect.

A poignant examination of a destroyed and atrophied life and an inarguable denunciation of the death penalty and its supporters, this film is a major paradigm shift. After over a decade on death row, Wuornos, who persistently claimed self-defense from rape by her seven victims, upturned her initial testimony, saying that she committed the murders and wanted to atone with God. Broomfield's camera, at one point, keeps rolling unbeknownst to Wuornos, and she comes clean to the documentarian that she could not carry on her death row vigil and just wants it all to be over. Jeb Bush signed the execution order to grant her wish, claiming it the moral and correct thing to do.

Broomfield and his collaborator Joan Churchill, using Wuornos' past as a background, cement a dissertation that negates the pro-death penalty case made by its advocates, most significantly Jeb Bush who wants Florida to be more like Texas when it comes to killing convicts. The documentarians grill this negligence for human life and cite the 100 or more cases where a death row inmate was released as innocent. This should be enough to abolish the barbarity. Link this affirmation with the barefaced, obvious and palpable proof of Aileen's unstable state of mind.

Again, the power of the film comes from its merging of the angry political framework with its unspeakable personal strife. Broomfield resolutely uses his camera to show the aggrieved, bewildered mental state of his subject. He pins down her history, supplying abundant verification for her present state. The media spectacle that envelops death row as Aileen's execution approaches exposes the freak show that cultivated this unfortunate woman. After Aileen's death is broadcast, the statement made to the press details her last words, incoherence about Jesus and spaceships.

To most people, the proof of the senses is generally reliable. We say seeing's believing. If someone asks, "How do you know someone's in the bathroom?" it's sufficient to say, "Because I saw and heard them." Consistent with the conventions of day-to-day life, an assertion's verified if we can refer to some sense encounter as proof of it. But the senses are vulnerable, exposed. Even a more internally unfailing practice may not match with any truth. Historical fact and deduction may all be coherent, but maybe things didn't occur that way. You could even say science and mathematics, while making purely logical sense, may not illustrate truth at all. How many detective stories involve evidence clearly pointing to a character who turns out to be innocent after all? Vice versa? Perhaps the most telling moment of the film is when Broomfield has to pretend the camera is off for Aileen to say something, something very distressing that may or may not be the truth, but to her, it's gospel.