Eastwood’s Changeling a Frustrating Drama
Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is making the best of a bad hand. Her husband left the moment he discovered she was pregnant, leaving the young woman alone to raise the boy Walter on her own. A handful of years later, she’s done just that, working long hours as a telephone operations supervisor – the first in Los Angeles – to make sure she can give him the life she thinks he deserves.
Angelina Jolie is fighting for her son in Unviersal Pictures' Changeling
But just as things look right as rain, Christine comes home one cold 1928 evening to discover her pride and joy missing and no one in the neighborhood knowing where he’s gone to. Hoping for the best, the single mother leaves it to the LAPD to find her boy, and after five months of searching when the department claims to have found him the woman is understandably ecstatic.
The problem is, this new boy is not her son. Making matters worse, the detective-in-charge, Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), refuses to believe her when she says so, even throwing her into a sanitarium when she threatens to make this disclosure publicly. With the aid of corruption crusader Rev. Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), Christine fights back the only way she knows how, spearheading a crusade changing California law forever all while still frantically holding out hope her boy will safely find his way home.
Based on a true story, Clint Eastwood’s (Unforgiven, Letters from Iwo Jima) latest drama Changeling is a movie I wish I liked more than I actually do. Like all of the director’s pictures, it is tastefully made, delicately paced, intelligently constructed and layered together with subtle brushstrokes we seldom get the opportunity to witness anymore. Unlike his recent efforts, it’s also unforgivably obvious and unsurprising, Eastwood telegraphing all the twists and turns in writer J. Michael Straczynski’s script long before they ever have the chance to come to light on their own.
It’s all a bit frustrating. While there are moments as good as anything to be found in any of the filmmaker’s oeuvre, the absence of suspense and the lack of surprises really is a killer. While the trailers and ads have done a fantastic job of keeping the majority of the picture’s intents hidden from prying eyes, the same cannot be said for the actual film itself. When things twist into the story of a serial murderer there is no shock and awe when the truth is revealed. When they shift again into the saga of women’s rights in the face of a corrupt male-oriented system the final victories are hollow and without any euphoric power.
Don’t blame Jolie for any of this. The woman is as good as she’s ever been, almost as stunning as she was in 2007’s A Mighty Heart. There is a wounded restraint to her performance that’s bittersweet and touching, the actress creating the hollowed out figure of a mother breaking apart at the seams yet still finding a way to hold it together in the hopes her personal strength will in some small way help find her son. It is a mesmerizing portrait of loss and regret, Jolie juxtaposing these painful miseries with a galvanized backbone of determination and strength that nearly brought me to tears.
She isn’t the only laudable figure here, either. There is a killer scene in an interrogation room between Broken English and Invincible character actor Michael Kelly and relative newcomer Eddie Alderson (he was also in Reservation Road) that’s as good as anything I’ve seen this year. What these two do together in this scene utterly broke my heart and horrified me to my very core, both actors achieving a level of intimacy with the audience so complete I almost felt I was sitting right there at the table with them.
The thing is, as good as all of this is the movie still can’t help but be a disappointment. There isn’t any guesswork to where it is all going or about what is going to happen next, and while I adore the fact Eastwood refuses to wallow in easy Hollywood clichés or maudlin melodrama I equally loathe the reality that he’s also robbed the picture of all of its emotion. The film is so clinical, so methodic in its approach and handling it almost feels perfunctory and inert, all its momentum vanishing pretty much about the time Walter disappears.
I am one of the director’s biggest fans. I have fought tooth and nail for more of his pictures than I probably care to admit, only a small handful of the one’s he chosen to step behind the camera for coming anything even remotely close to being an outright failure. Unfortunately, this one joins that tiny group, Changeling a frustrating missed opportunity that can’t decide what it is or where it wants to go ultimately becoming a disappointing blip on Eastwood’s otherwise stunning directorial resume.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
Additional Links
- Changeling Theatrical Trailer
