In true family passion: ‘The Menendez Murders’
by Tito Genova Valiente, https://www.facebook.com/, https://www.facebook.com/BusinessMirror/ · BusinessMirror- Tito Genova Valiente
- October 18, 2024
- 4 minute read
I SHOULD have titled this review “The Menendez Monsters,” but doing so I would have burdened the series created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan. As it is, there is, aside from that limited series, a documentary, The Menendez Brothers, is already on the coattails of the Monster franchise.
In my mind, however, there are three Menendez epic tales: these docu and series together with the persistent coverage of Dominick Dunne via Vanity Fair in the late 1980s and 1990s. All these are crowding each other and, instead of fighting them, they have become to me what a crime of passion in the context of a family is all about. Somewhere there is a twisted sense of reality.
In Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, the story of the two brothers is a grim unfolding of a success story that goes down the drain. Born to wealth, in Beverly Hills no less, Lyle and Erick are two attractive persons with a father so strict and controlling and a mother who serves merely as a mouthpiece of her husband.
How did these two brothers arrive at a decision to kill their father and mother? There are flashback scenes of the father demanding from the two a life of excellence. Which is not unreasonable at all; in fact, if one looks back, the father could be unreasonable but there was a reason why. He was coming from Cuba and the new life in the United States was not only a promise but already a reality. He badly wanted his children to share in that American dream. Would this warrant a death sentence on the father and the mother?
It is obvious that if we need to understand why Lyle and Erik murdered their father and mother, there must be something else—something evil and beyond redemption.
Along the way, the two brothers slowly reveal the reason for their fear of their parents—the father first but later on, the mother’s image of a cruel guardian begins to fuse with the stern patriarch. In the series, we do not see much of these but rather through the confessions done through a shrink. The father was abusing them. In the film, the older brother was also abusing the younger one.
To a point, the narrative was transformed into a Rashomonic device, with different perspectives all at once describing the crime and the motives. The effect is a lack of commitment on the part of the writers to finally pinpoint the very reason why the crime was committed. Still, we get very compelling performances from the actors playing Dr. Oziel and the two brothers.
As Dr. Oziel, Dallas Roberts is an intense medical man, his neurosis and nervousness so contagious we fear for his life. Dominick Dunne, as portrayed by Nathan Lane, is another significant presence, his father intertwined with that of Leslie Abramson, the lawyer defending one of the brothers. Dunne’s daughter was murdered by the man for whom Abramson made the plea deal.
As Abramson, Ari Graynor became a real human being. In the Vanity Fair articles of Dunne, she was devoid of morality; in the series, she was a force of nature bordering on the fearsome caricature.
Nicholas Alexander Chavez as the older Lyle has a disturbing similarity to the real Lyle. He has a tautness that seems ready to uncoil and break always. As Erik, Cooper Coch is a wounded soul, tremblingly sensitive and were it not for the fact that he was one of the murderers, he seemingly had the most appealing personality of the two brothers.
It is said the warm reception accorded Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story compelled Netflix to follow up the narrative of the two brothers with a documentary no less about them and the crime that made them celebrities.
The documentary carries the title The Menendez Brothers. It is directed by Alejandro Hartmann. Convicted of the murders of their parents way back in 1989, the documentary was pieced together with Kyle and Lyle speaking through audio interviews. Although the two admitted to the crime, the public are still torn as to the motives of the two. Were they after the wealth they were to inherit, or were they terrified of what their father and mother (she was threatening to poison them) would do to them?
A bonus in the documentary is the appearance of real people, which include the following: Pamela Bozanich, the lead prosecutor of the first trial of the Menendez brothers; Hazel Thornton, juror from the first trial and the writer of Hung Jury: The Diary of the Menendez Juror; Shelley Ross, a former ABC News TV executive; and, Robert Rand, a Miami Herald journalist who covered the trials.
Both the documentary and the series stream on Netflix. This Monster series follows another hit, Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. The story of Dahmer and the Menendez brothers both received mixed reviews but went on to garner hot reception from audiences worldwide, which only goes to show how we love epic tales of terrible monsters.
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