Review of Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003) by David A — 24 Jul 2007

Cheap & exploitative are criticisms that have been levelled at Nick Broomfield and his documentary making. Generally, I would disagree with those who would have a snipe at Broomfield, as I think a lot of his work is interesting, and he comes at the subject matter from an original angle putting himself in the picture, although this is not a particularly new technique by today?s documentary standards; Louis Theroux has probably improved upon the technique and usurped Broomfield (I think that?s because Theroux is generally more charming, and easier to warm to).

However with the Aileen Wuornos film I think Broomfield has made a sloppy exploitative piece of documentary making. The film is a follow up from the early 90?s documentary where Broomfield befriended the serial killer and highlighted some of the perceived injustices in her case. This film is set almost a decade later with Wournos on death row awaiting execution, and Broomfield called with a number of others to be witnesses at an appeal to her sentence. The appeal in its self is a farce, as Wournos wants to die, and tries to make sure the appeal is derailed. Broomfield takes the opportunity to reacquaint himself with Wournos, and in the run up to her eventual execution is granted a number of interviews with her on death row. Nothing new is really learned from the interviews, Wournos fragile mental state worsens over the course of the year or so that the film is set. Wournos uses Broomfield and his camera lens to have digs at those whom she perceives have been guilty of a conspiracy to see her hideous acts exploited for Hollywood money, the substance of some of her accusations are so wild and unbelievable, Broomfield should have thought a little more carefully about what he included from her interviews in the cutting room. Since this was an exercise in exploiting his unique access to Wuornos to make more money, by rehashing his old film, with new interviews, with the by now insane Wournos, Broomfield seemed to let the interviews run long on screen to fill time rather than provide insightful comment.

Nothing new was really learned about Wournos apart from the decline in the mental state, and that Broomfield was happy to exploit his relationship to make a new film. My final criticism was the quality of the filmmaking. This was filmed circa 2001-02 on DV, and granted the cameras of the time like the VX1000 and PD150 were not as sharp in image quality or picture resolution as the Sony Z1?s of today, but that is no excuse for badly shot footage, a lot of the interviews and actuality set ups were terribly shot, perhaps by someone who was not used to filming in an ob-doc style. The badly shoot footage really made watching what was a poor documentary, much worse.

Sorry Mr Broomfield, but could do so much better.