😍 2022-10-28 16:00:03 – Paris/France.
Eddie Redmayne as Charlie Cullen and Jessica Chastain as Amy Loughren in 'Angel of Death'. Cr JoJo Wilden/Netflix
Stories of serial killers have the capacity to freeze our blood but also to arouse our most primitive curiosity in wanting to understand, or know, what motivates them. Hence series like spirit hunter will captivate us so much and that the dark chronicle is reaching its peak thanks to the global access offered by the platforms of Streaming. Now, after the success of dahmer, Vigilant and the great success that a film like The stranger, Netflix continues its leadership as a true crime server by adding another scary story to its catalog via Angel of Death.
However, the film starring Jessica Chastain Yes Eddie Redmayne about a New Jersey nurse who allegedly murdered nearly 400 patients between 1988 and 2003, omits one of the essential details of the genre. And it is that at the end of the story it is inevitable not to feel a certain disappointment when we find ourselves with doubt about the big question: why did he do that? However, there are details of the case that the film does not include that illuminate the psyche of this murderer.
But let's go back to the beginning. charlie cullen He worked as a nurse for 16 years but is currently serving 18 consecutive life sentences after murdering 29 confirmed patients, although experts believe the figure would rise to 400. His case is shocking as he is a ward officer of health, an essential figure at the time of needing help or saving our lives, who took advantage of the freedom of hospital bureaucracy to inject insulin and drugs such as digoxin into intravenous bags, causing overdoses in patients.
However, Angel of Death sets her sights on the police investigation, launching a direct critique at the heart of hospital bureaucracy and the relationship Cullen forges with another nurse (Jessica Chastain), who assists investigators after discovering the gruesome acts of her friend and companion . Thus, the film approaches the case from the perspective of Amy, highlighting an overworked, heart-sick single mother, as well as the heroism of a street person who risked her health and her job for unmask the murderer. Jessica Chastain does an exquisite job of infecting us with her fatigue, without dramatizing her character's bravery but rather giving her a naturalness that makes her the heart of the story. Whereas Eddie Redmayne he fully steps into Cullen's shoes maintaining a shroud of mystery and suspects they are making him a gray figure all along. His way of walking, of boasting of his problems and even of his kindness sowed doubt, making the exposure of his crimes to the police explodes in one of the most visceral sequences of the recent genre.
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Eddie Redmayne as Charlie Cullen in 'Angel of Death'. Cr JoJo Wilden/Netflix
With this narrative strategy, the film avoids expressing the suffering of the victims (none of the deaths that appear in the film are based on a specific victim), their loved ones, or falling into the dangerous abyss of elevating the crimes to advantageous ground. Rather, it offers a critical and analytical version of it that serves more as a dart against the American health care legal system for giving Cullen free rein for years, than as a serial killer story.. Very similar to what you did Dr. Death, the (very interesting) StarzPlay series about surgeon Christopher Duntsch (played by Joshua Jackson) who committed real atrocities on his patients by jumping from hospital to hospital (like Charles Cullen did), thanks to the fact that the centers would have got rid of him without making him pay any consequences and thus, internal legal problems were avoided.
Thus, by diverting the narrative from the search for explanations, the film diffuses the feeling of being faced with an unfinished story. Even more when one of the last labels assures that the nurse " He never explained why he did that. » making the need to go out in search of more information inevitable. And that's how, while searching, I found that Charles Cullen gave explanations.
The film is based on a book of the same name written by Charles Graeber and published in 2013 where the author explains that he gave some reasons behind his actions. For example, according to the detailed summary of Wikipedia, said he overdosed patients to prevent them from going into cardiac or respiratory arrest and included them in a Code Blue emergency. Mainly because he told detectives that he couldn't bear to witness or listen to resuscitation attempts to save a life.
These details appear in the film through certain sequences. Specifically, scenes that see him watching his crimes from a distance or at the start, when the tape begins to show a young Cullen being pulled aside by a medical team during an emergency involving a patient. Later, the connection is found when she tells Amy that her mother died in a hospital, where they lost her body and left her naked and forgotten. As if that implied that, perhaps, there is a certain thirst for revenge against the hospitals which is linked to their murders. However, in reality, Cullen's mother died in a car accident when he was 17. A situation all the more devastating as the hospital was slow to warn him and cremated his body without asking him (slate).
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But that's not all, in the book it is also explained that Cullen allegedly said he overdosed patients in order to end their suffering and prevent hospital staff from dehumanizing them. This was repeated in an interview with 60 minutess (via News.com.au). " I thought people weren't suffering anymore. So in a way I thought I was helping them". "There is no justification for what I did. I just think the only thing I can say is that I felt overwhelmed at the time”. And as he expressed remorse for his crimes, he later added: I don't know if I would have stopped"
In any case, it is likely that the film chose not to include all these details to maintain its narrative intention and, incidentally, to avoid giving more explanations. After all, the reasons the killer allegedly gave don't hold up, since not all of the murdered patients were terminally ill, nor is it known if he selected them or if the victims were random.
However, knowing these details allows us to get a bigger picture of a murderer who didn't just shout at the police that he "couldn't" explain what he had done, nor keep his mouth shut. accepting his pain. But we're dealing with a murderer who has tried to explain things without thinking, perhaps with the intention of reaching some kind of understanding or creating an excuse to hide his crimes.
Moreover, there is a detail that the film does not explain and that is that during two of the trials (in 2004 and 2006) he challenged the judges by repeating and shouting 'Your honor, you must resign'. In the second, he said he was upset by a comment the judge made to a newspaper that he was leaning towards forcing Cullen to show up on sentencing day. The murderer spent half an hour screaming and repeating the phrase until the judge ordered him to be restrained and gagged. Additionally, a family member of one victim had to raise his voice to be able to hear him between Cullen's screams (NBC).
All of this creates an immature image for us, incapable of taking the prosecution of his actions seriously, far from the end of the film with a murderer who is content to confess and accept his sentence. In addition to the lack of respect for the victims and the families he damaged with his crimes.
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SOURCE: Reviews News
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