Well, Charlotte, it’s your turn to be the Compassionate Charlotte. When it comes to the movie Monster, I am definitely the sterner Charlotte (scroll down).
Yes, yes, the human heart yearns for love. Yes, Yes, Wuornos’ heart yearned for love, as you noted. She was truly damaged goods. So what? Charlize Theron said in an interview something to the effect that, when preparing for the part, she had to remember that Wuornos was a monster. She got it wrong: She should have had no trouble remembering that. She should have had to struggle to remember that a woman who could do what Wuornos did was human (and thus capable of love). I wouldn’t have minded the sympathetic treatment quite so much if the movie balanced it against Wuornos’ real evil. She really, really was a monster.
The ending (Wuornos walks through a door and into the blinding light) implied a more celestial ending than one might expect for a cold-blooded killer. I actually read Wuornos biographer Sue Russell’s piece the morning after I saw the film, but it helped me realize why the movie made me so angry. Somebody asked me last night, Did you leave the movie feeling ambivalent? No, I did not.