The "Good Old Days" of movie making are right now!

Rating: 10/10 (10 January 2009)

There is a hauntingly beautiful song called "Dark Side Of Your Soul", sung by the under-rated singer, Kiki Dee. Part of the lyrics say, "If you never know the darker side, you'll never see the light --- of your soul." This past week I have seen the dark and the light. The movie "Australia" was a clunker. It reminded me of the cloyingly morose songs sung by Celine Dion, who suffocates every line with sobbing, carefully-crafted sincerity. "Australia" should have been a magnificent movie, but it lacks any warmth; instead it relies on the kind of plastic, manufactured sincerity that we saw in other clunkers like "Pearl Harbor".
"Changeling" is the complete opposite. I was transfixed. What was happening on the screen commanded my total attention. Mrs. Collins' anguish became my own. I wanted her to find her son every bit as much as she did.
"Changeling" is based on a true story about Christine Collins, a California woman whose son was abducted in 1928. Right from the start, you feel her anguish, and the frustration of not knowing where her son is, nor whether he is alive or dead.
One of the elements of brilliance in this movie is how plausible everything is. Mrs. Collins is not just fighting the agony of losing her son, but also battling against the incredibly corrupt L.A.P.D. who see her as an embarrassment to the police force. When the public attention becomes too great a liability for the L.A.P.D. they have her sent to a psychiatric ward. This part was absolutely chilling, because it showed how completely helpless she was when everyone is part of the conspiracy of silence. No matter what she does, she cannot prevail.
Angelina Jolie has to walk a tightrope of sorts in this movie. She is strong-willed, but she is not some ultimately invincible, puffed up superwoman that can single-handedly take on the whole world, and especially not this world, which is rife with corruption.
At the end of "Changeling" you learn if there was a happy reuniting of mother and son. Since I have chosen not to write any "spoilers", you'll have to see the movie for yourself to know the answer. And that will be time very well spent because this movie truly is like the golden age of film making.
**Addition added January 16, 2009** I first started writing these reviews in 2005. Sometimes three years went by without even one thumbs up or down on a review. So now I just regularly ask people to rate it. I'm just curious how many people read these reviews.