The true story of Lizzie Borden is far more interesting, unsettling, and provocative than any Hollywood retelling of it. This version is like every other version of Monster: lots of sex, lots of violence, but no real truths told. Real life will always be far more disturbing than whatever the human imagination can come up with. Real life is so disturbing, in fact, that people have to invent fantasies around them to explain how something so monstrous could have happened.
One of the great things about great filmmakers is how they can show violence without showing violence, and in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the goal is to turn you on. That’s it. It’s obviously nothing like the truth, but boy do I wish someone would make a great version of Lizzie’s story without it being eroticized. There was nothing erotic about Lizzie, her home life, her maid’s miserable life, the suffocating relationship with her father. All the truth is so great and yet, Hollywood again and again feels the need to tell it this way.
It’s funny because today’s Hollywood is so well behaved, and always colors within the lines, that the only way they can shock their audiences is by fetishizing murderers like Ed Gein and now, Lizzie Borden. It’s just that, ultimately, it’s not as disturbing as it would be had they just stuck to the truth.
