Telling how a detective series based on a true story which has already given rise to no less than 17 documentaries, three TV films, two mini-series and three podcasts ends, is that still a spoiler? This is the question I ask myself when talking to you about Monsters. The story of Lyle and Erik Menendeza nine-episode miniseries directed by Ryan Murphy, currently streaming on Netflix. If you don’t yet know that the two Menendez brothers murdered their father and mother with rifles on August 20, 1989, in the TV room of their luxurious Beverley Hills villa, when they were respectively aged 21 and 22 years old, know that you, like me, missed out on one of the most exciting criminal cases in the history of the United States, which nevertheless has quite a few.
So it’s time to get started. But, if I may give you some advice, watch this series while resisting the urge to go to Wikipedia for as long as possible to find out how the two brothers ended up. For my part, I held out until the end of the fifth episode, I wanted to know if these Menendez brothers had really existed, I ended up doubting it, just as I doubted that there were screenwriters capable of inventing such characters , embroiled in such enormous lies. Doubt sharpening my nervousness as a moviegoer, I could have continued to suffer deliciously in front of this family of very rich Cuban immigrants (José, the father, became director of RCA Records), each competing in stupidity and wickedness.
Thirty-five minutes of an (almost) fixed shot
Why did I break down in the fifth episode? Because it’s the most extraordinary. Unbearable genre. It’s the shortest: thirty-five minutes. During a conversation in the prison visiting room, in front of his lawyer, Erik Menendez, the youngest of the brothers, as handsome as a Californian surfer, gives the account of the psychological torture and sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of of his father throughout his childhood. It is shot in a single shot, without the slightest cut, no reverse shot on the lawyer, of whom we only see her voluminous blonde curls. The orphan assassin sits in front of a table, he empties his bag for more than thirty-five minutes of this shot which we believe to be fixed, but which, slowly, very slowly, approaches the face of Erik Menendez, who obtains, with this confession, the good Lord.
During this imperceptible approach, nothing is spared, at least not the genius of the actor, Cooper Koch, literally melted into the skin of poor Erik who tells his lawyer how his father (played by Javier Bardem) pushed his incestuous and pedophilic vice to the point of being sodomized by his son. I’ve never heard that, and if I allow myself to share it with you, it’s because in fact, don’t worry, it’s all bogus. Finally, it is very likely that this pathetic story is only a fable, suggested by the lawyer to enable her to plead the self-defense of the accused in the face of a father who was preparing to kill his children to prevent them from revealing everything. to their mother, to their therapist, to the whole world, as they allegedly threatened.
Repeated at the hearing, Erik’s act wins the sympathy of the jury. But that’s without taking into account his brother, who went to brag to a journalist who came to interview him and pretended to fall in love with him: “We invented everything.”
Today, as I discovered in my favorite encyclopedia, the two brothers are still in jail, a new trial must take place thirty-five years after the double murder, enough to give rise to some new derivative products.
Whether one believes in Father Menendez’s evil or not, the fact that his children invented such a story shows once again that it is stupidity and nothing else that leads to wickedness. And it was still he who raised them in the cult of sporting and academic performance. Efficient, they will have been in crime.
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