Changeling
This true story is stranger than fiction — trouble is, Angelina Jolie never makes it seem real
Every so often, Angelina Jolie likes to remind the world she is more than a beautiful face, and more than one half of Hollywood’s pre-eminent power couple — she wants to show you she’s a great actress. Clint Eastwood’s latest, Changeling, at more than two hours long, gives her plenty of opportunity to prove her worth. But can the great actress ever outshine the global star?
Changeling is one of those true stories that are so fantastic, they seem to have escaped from the world of fiction. Yet not even Kafka or James Ellroy would have dared come up with this tale of power and corruption. In Los Angeles in 1928, a single working-class mum, Christine Collins (Jolie), comes back one afternoon from a Saturday shift and finds that her nine-year-old son, Walter (Gattlin Griffith), is missing. After months of investigating the case, the police claim they have found him. “This is not my son,” Christine declares when boy and mother first meet.
The LAPD, anxious that their mistake will cause more bad press coverage and public ridicule, insist that she is simply confused and that it is her boy, a fiction the boy is happy to perpetuate. The cop in charge of the case suggests she take the lad home to “try him out for a while”. There, she sees he can’t possibly be Walter because he’s three inches shorter than her son and circumcised.
You would think the police would come to their senses and start looking for the missing boy. What is so remarkable about this story, however, is the way the police twist reason and turn reality upside down to suit their needs — and expect to get away with it.
We see them always finding a way to counter uncomfortable facts with convenient fictions. The boy’s missing three inches? They get a doctor to claim that trauma has caused his spine to shrivel. When Christine protests that a mother should know her own son, the police counter with: “That’s why you’re not objective.”
Eventually, she is forced to go to the press with her story. The police retaliate by branding her a bad mother and a disturbed individual, and have her committed to a psychiatric ward, where she is subjected to all sorts of threats and abuse. Meanwhile, the one decent cop in the force begins investigating a serial killer who may or may not have murdered Walter.
What we have here is ordinary mom as hero — the lone woman who stands up to the abuse of officialdom. That’s fine, but the film never seems to trust the story for its impact: it wants to tear out your heartstrings and wrap them around your throat. This is odd, because, as a director, Eastwood is admired for his uncluttered approach. He is a superb, fuss-free craftsman who keeps it simple. If only his film were as emotionally sparse as its visual style, it would have avoided becoming a work of overwrought melodrama.
The anguish of Christine’s story is supplemented by the parallel tale about the serial killer. J Michael Straczynski’s screenplay goes into gory detail, showing us terrified children, cooped up in a cage awaiting execution, and the blood-stained killer hacking away at his off-screen prey. Then the film, for all its grief and gloom, goes — would you believe? — for an upbeat ending.
Changeling hits the most easy and accessible of our emotional buttons. Of course, it’s moving and harrowing — films about missing or murdered children and their anguished mothers are inherently moving. Great cinema, though, demands something more than our pity; we can read the newspapers for that.
There are plenty of performances to enjoy here, among them John Malkovich’s turn as the Rev Gustav Briegleb, Christine’s eccentric crusading supporter. But Jolie’s is a very showy performance from an actress with a very modest talent. Not for a moment does Jolie the star disappear and Christine the character take over. (As for Christine being working-class, I never even realised that until I read the production notes.)
When we see Christine with her son, before he goes missing, there is never that sense of intimacy that exists between mother and child; she speaks to him like a baby-sitter. Jolie can, I admit, weep, wail and tremble with the best of them, and it’s as a victim that she is at her best. During the film’s quiet moments, though — as when we see her in her son’s bedroom, holding his teddy bear — she never really says anything with just a look that sends a shiver down your spine.
That said, I have no doubt that for such a performance, she will win the recognition she craves — and an Oscar, too.
This post has been edited by zvintik on 30 Nov 2008, 18:02
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ANGELina Jolie / ანჯელინა ჯოლი (Part 2), Just amazing
