An American Crime...

I just watched the movie with my mum, called An American Crime. And my verdict is:

It's a GREAT movie. A MUST watch for every living being with conscience in them! I'm serious.

The movie based on a TRUE story which happened in the state of Indiana in 1965, and I can tell you that this movie, is a LOT MORE SCARY and HORRIFYING than a horror movie.

It was released in December 2007 (just last year, so I assure you that the movie is in color, not black and white, just in case you thought it was shot in 1965 itself ;p), and the actors in it are simply amazing. The story is about Sylvia Likens (acted by Ellen Page) along with her sister, Jenny, who was sent to Gertrude (a "part-time" babysitter) around June 1965 because her parents had to travel as they were working at the circus. While staying there, Sylvia was abused and left paralyzed in the basement, where she was further subjected to abuse by the babysitter's children, and also several children around the neighborhood. The abuse that she had to went to was getting beaten, kicked, burned with cigarettes, and the worst was putting a bottle of coke up her vagina.. In the end, Sylvia *spoilers ahead* died of brain haemorrage, shock and malnutrition in the end of October 1965. (The movie didn't tell the whole story of what happened, so you should read the Wikipedia link on both Gertrude and Sylvia which I linked above, to find out more about it. It's extremely saddening..)

Though the movie did not have any gory scenes what-so-ever, it did it's job to send a strong message, about what is happening in our society nowadays. I started to think more about how inhumane people actually were back in the 1960s, and I guess now in almost 50 years later, we have not done a very good job in cultivating citizens with good manners, instead we've only produced more uncivilized people. Domestic abuse is everywhere, as you can see from in Austria, where the dad raped his daughter and fathered her children, and kept them all locked underground. The world is a sick sick place, I'm just glad and thankfully that I'm lucky enough to be sitting here, typing, and being able to have watched the movie, and think about humanity. Now, I am also thankful that my ancestors have moved over here to Malaysia, IF not, I may have been one of the tens of thousands of the earthquake victims in China.

To me, natural disasters such as earthquakes and cyclones are part of natural. There's no one to blame, but in the case of domestic abuse, someone's to blame. No one wants to be a victim of torture or abuse, it's a painful and horrifying thing.

Here's a trailer for the movie. Do watch it, and get your brain cells thinking about it. It's a short movie, only around 90mins, spare the time, and feel a little more.