Well, yesterday I saw the movie "Changeling". A truly chilling tale of crime, corruption, loss and murder of innocent children. It may not be your cup of tea, but I suggest that you watch it anyway. It is a work of art, in terms of both its direction and Jolie's acting.
And hence, as most great works of art do, they cause me to start being introspective. They make me look at society and question it: its morals, its repercussions on the individual.
True, the movie is set in 1928: nowadays, if you kill a person in the US, if you sneeze within twenty-four hours the CSI will be on you with a hanky and a pair of handcuffs. But still, corruption in the police force is as ubiquitous as ever. Somebody, somewhere, is currently being wronged. He/She is a victim of the intense human desire for power.
The endeavours of one Christine Collins, a wronged citizen, made sure that the police's power on the citizens were limited; they can no longer lock people up in a mental ward, without a very, very valid reason. Her need to find her son was great and through it she cataclysmally affected and changed the American Law.
Here's the most ironic fact of it all: She never did find her son.
All that work, all those years of searching, all that good that came out of her actions, all of it was for her son.
In a fair world, Justice is precise, swift and exact. In a fair world, Walter Collins would have been found. In a fair world, the universe/fate/god/spaghetti noodle, would have taken pity on the poor woman.
But we do not live in a fair world.
Christine Collins got the, what I call, poetically tragic ending. The perfect ending. The most true, most raw, most terrifying ending of all: a realistic ending.
Chills me to the bone, this.
Long live Art!
Good Morrow.
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