Aileen: Life and Death of A Serial Killer [DVD] [2003]

Broomfield uses cuts from the police video of her original confession, pieces from US television news broadcasts, and excerpts from his earlier film. He repeats the message that here is a woman for whom justice became secondary to gratuitous celebrity - lawyers, policemen, former friends, and relatives all tried to cash in on her name and secure Hollywood deals for their own stories. Aileen ceased to be a person - she became a brand name, a product to be used and thrown away.

Aileen, herself, is revealed as a confused, lonely, angry woman. She has attracted excessive hatred simply by being a woman. Male serial killers are ten a penny. But a woman serial killer! Now that's unnatural! The person ceased to exist. But you appreciate the person ceased to exist long ago. Abused as a child, driven from her home and forced to live in the woods, growing through adolescence to become a hitchhiking hooker who set off for warmer climes, she had always been rejected, had always been anonymous, had always been left to her own fantasies for comfort.

And the world wants vengeance, wants to expunge her existence and her memory, leaving only the celluloid images and myths. She initially insists that she killed the first man to preserve herself during a violent rape - and prostitutes can be the victim of rape, remember, and are all too frequently the victims of assault and murder. Thereafter, she changes her story, says it was just cold blooded robbery - she wants to die, she wants to be executed, she wants to get it over with.

You are left, in the end, wondering exactly what happened, what went on in her mind. Broomfield sets out to leave questions in the air, but you are left thinking it would have been a better film if he'd been prepared to analyse and speculate. He emerges as a compassionate film-maker, but he's just a little bit too detached to be able to reach insights into Aileen's behaviour, personality, and mind. Perhaps he's only too conscious that any film-maker is open to the accusation that they are exploiting the subject's name to make money and a reputation for themselves.

Perhaps it's my own experiences as a Probation Officer? I expect more analysis. You never interview a killer, you interview a person and never allow that label to sidetrack you from seeking to understand the person. Aileen Wurnos became labelled as a 'female serial killer', and thereafter nobody could see beyond that label. The label was the brand, and all people wanted to explore was the contents of the tin, the contents of the package, not the person herself. In the end, it was the label which was executed. The person remained anonymous.

Nick Broomfield offers an interesting and intriguing view of the American penal system and public attitudes to murder, but it's an ultimately unsatisfactory exploration and analysis of Aileen, the woman.

The biggest problem with the "Biggie & Tupac" film was that because everyone interviewed was so careful, as they could incriminate themselves or end up on the wrong side of the Crip or Blood gangs, nobody was willing to open up. With the "Kurt" film, Broomfield had to battle against adversity every step of the way through financing problems.

There are neither of these problems in the case of his second film about "America's first female serial killer" Aileen Wouronous. Everybody interviewed gives nothing less than their all and are completely willing to open up in interviews. The interviews with Aileen herself reveal her to be a surprisingly complex character, both angry and bitter but also charming and polite. It is this element that makes the film so watchable.

Without giving too much away, the film goes in depth into Aileen's childhood and reveals her lifelong battle against adversity, from when her mother abandoned her to her execution. Nick interviews many people including people who knew her as a youngster, the guy who represented (or should that be mis-represented!) her at the original trial and Aileen's mother.

Nick assumes a more unbiased stance in this film than he did in segments of his others. This comes across especially in his interviews with Aileen which take on a more conversational tone than the almost interogational and more judgemental approach that was used in his other films. This results in more openess allround and a better understanding of Aileen.

The film includes excerpts from Nick's currently unavailable film "The Making and Selling Of A Serial Killer" (his original film about Aileen fron 1992) as well as news footage of her from her original trial's to the day of her execution. It also includes an excerpt from the original police video of Aileen's confession as well as news footage of Jeb Bush commenting on his decision to sign her death warrant.

The interviews with Aileen herself are the most interesting part of this film. She is completely open about herself, her relationships and what she has (and has'nt!) done. She comes across not as a psychpathic killer but as a little girl lost, someone who could easily have achieved great things but was never given the chance by both her family and society at large.

It is a tragic story of someone who was tossed aside before her life had even begun, of someone who had to fight for everything she ever got (which was'nt much). Amazingly though, Aileen does not hang her head and drag her feet or cry into her glass, she laces many of the segments in which she is featured with good humour and does not let her dire situation drag her down, even on the days before her execution.

If you want the latest mindless trash from Hollywood go and see "Scooby Doo 2", if you want a great human interest story that draws from both a hateful and notorious but also funny, intelligent (some would mad, paranoid or both) and charming individual who was exploited from her earliest days to her final hours and beyond (someone will eventually write a book you can bet!) then you should give this a try.