Monster is an amazing film. As I sat down at the beginning I thought, I’m not sure I want to watch this. The previous film I saw was 21 Grams, also excellent, but in no way jolly. I have to give myself a break, I thought.

The film is very sympathetic to Aileen Wournos. The Daily Mail reader in you will turn that sentence around and could revile the film and me for saying such a bleeding-heart liberal thing. I believe the truth is that people do things for a reason and Aileen is a very sad example of that.

Charlize Theron comes out of the right field to play Aileen and gives an amazing performance. Like Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball, she lets everything go and completely opens herself up to give a very honest and emotive performance. I think that’s quite an acheivement given a background in Hollywood and modelling, worlds not conducive to honesty or openness. Yet her portrait of a terribly poor downtrodden woman is utterly convincing. Christina Ricci is also very good and only doesn’t get more attention because she stands next to such a triumph.

At the end of the film, I didn’t feel emotionally beaten like I had expected. I felt happy. And excuse me while I drop into bleeding-heart again, but I felt proud because I think films like Monster remind us that there are a lot of people in the world and all they really want is to be happy. There are many people who make mistakes and those mistakes come to define them in the eyes of others. I’m not saying that all Aileen Wournos needed was a big hug. I’m saying we should try and make the world a less destructive place for the next Aileen-to-be right now, so that we don’t end up putting other people in the same situation.