Changeling

I normally write only about movies that I watch in theatres while they are still new, but Changeling is an extremely exceptional movie and I don't think that too many people I know have actually seen it.

It is a period drama set in the late 1920s - early 30s, primarily in Los Angeles, California. It is based on the true story of a mother looking for her missing child and not getting enough co-operation from the police. At first they tell her that, in line with their policy, they do not dispatch search parties for lost children for twenty four hours because ninety percent of them turn up by morning. Then they find her a child, not her child, and tell her that she is unable to recognize him because she is in shock and not thinking clearly, and that the boy lost weight over the past five months when he was missing.

The LAPD's appalling acts do not stop there. When the mother continues to insist that the boy is not her son, they accuse her of trying to shirk her responsibilities as a mother by turning the boy over to the state, and deem her mentally unstable and throw her into an asylum.

This film showed me a world I'd never seen before, or known that it existed. This is an extremely riveting performance by Angelina Jolie in the lead role, which was definitely worthy of the Academy Award nomination, perhaps even the Award, although I should probably watch The Reader before I express an opinion on that.