Angelina Jolie does fine work as Christine
Collins in "Changeling", Clint Eastwood's film of the true story of the
disappearance of Christine's 9-year-old-son Walter in Los Angeles in 1928.
The film also features some terrific costume design. (Photo: Universal
Pictures)
THE POPCORN REEL FILM REVIEW/"Changeling"
L.A. Confidential Woman, 1928: On the Q.T.
But Never Hush-Hush
By
Omar P.L. Moore/October
24, 2008
Clint Eastwood visits the 1920's and '30's of Los Angeles to bring the true
story of Christine Collins to the big screen in "Changeling", again showing the
world why he is such an effective storyteller.
On March 10, 1928, just prior to the Great Depression and eight years after the
suffrage movement which culminated in getting women the right to vote in America
(via the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution), Christine Collins'
9-year-old-son Walter was abducted from the quiet home in a neighborhood and
never seen again. When Ms. Collins returned from work, the search for her
son, and the uncovering of injustice began. Mr. Eastwood navigates a
documentary-like drama that takes the lid off Los Angeles as the sunny city of
the west and depicts the corruption of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Angelina Jolie, in one of her strongest performances (ala "A Mighty Heart")
plays the anguished but resolute Ms. Collins, a telephone operator who faced
obstacles from the LAPD and other institutions of an oppressive state, commands
the screen with confidence but never injects self-righteousness into her
character. Aside from especially good work from actors Jeffrey Donovan (as
LAPD Captain J.J. Jones), Michael Kelly (as LAPD Officer Lester Ybarra) and
Eddie Alderson (as Sanford Clark), the revelation of "Changeling" is in its
outstanding cinematography by Tom Stern and Mr. Eastwood's own music score.
These two elements are indispensable to "Changeling", which opened today in New
York, Los Angeles and San Francisco and will expand on Halloween, and was
produced by Mr. Eastwood, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Robert Lorenz.
The cinematography defines a film that is a collision of two stories -- a
greenish-almost-monochromatic world in which women in Southern California are
trying to find their voices amidst a rabidly sexist and male-dominated society
that treats women like chattel, in which Ms. Collins's son (played by Gattlin
Griffith) vanishes -- and a sudden color-enriched world where a man will
earnestly try to do the right thing, even against his own deepest skepticism.
Before the second story jars the audience into shock, the first story, focused
principally on Ms. Collins, plays like an absolute horror story for the main
character, who endures just about every injustice and lie that one could
imagine. The editing (by Joel Cox and Gary Roach) is a key component and
the director takes a big chance in smashing these two visually distinct stories
together, but in the context of 1928 and the story being told, there likely was
little choice for Mr. Eastwood other than to possess all the subtlety of a
sledgehammer for the abrupt transition. This stark contrast is the only
complaint about "Changeling" -- which in truth could have been trimmed by ten
minutes.
Nonetheless, Mr. Eastwood has demonstrated an adeptness time and again with his
music scores in many of his films, and in "Changeling" his score is a device
that gently plays into both Ms. Jolie's character's isolation and hope.
Always discreet and never obtrusive, Mr. Eastwood's music composition plays like
an elegy to something both lost and found. There is an anchoring of wisdom
and a pedestrian way in which the film's calm direction unfolds. It's not
that the 78-year-old Mr. Eastwood is on auto-pilot -- it's just that he just
keeps on rolling along. Even when there is a moment of plausible
deniability in a brief confrontation in the film's final third, he refuses to
blink.
Of all Mr. Eastwood's fine directing efforts, this is only the second which
focuses on a main female protagonist (after "Million Dollar Baby".) While
"Unforgiven" (1992) showcased the battle-scarred determined women of the 1800's,
i.e., the Silkies and Strawberry Alices of the world, and "Mystic River" (2003)
depicted a contemporary Lady Macbeth type, Mr. Eastwood (like many male
filmmakers the world over) has in his career focused on men, hero-like men of
steel or circumstance -- and there are some here too, notably John Malkovich as
Angeleno preacher Reverend Gustav Briegleb -- but "Changeling" details the
contrast of a woman's awakening and fight for her child with a man's flawed
world, full of insecurity, weakness and the need to protect the corridors of
power, however corrupt they may be.
"Changeling" is written by J. Michael Straczynski and is a magnetic film
experience. It's difficult to take your eyes off, and the true story is
hard to fathom only if one is naive to the long and questionable history of the
Los Angeles Police Department, which has been involved in, or tried (or not), to
get to the bottom of some of that city's most infamous crimes: The Black Dahlia
murder (mid-1930's), the beating of Rodney King (1991), and the killings of
Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman (1994), the Rampart scandal of the late
1990's, and numerous cases in between.
Mr. Eastwood studies his history well, skewering the axiom of "protect and
serve" and rightfully placing it in the courageous hands of Christine Collins,
as well as the bravery of Sanford Clark, for that matter.
"Changeling" is riveting drama at its finest.
With Amy Ryan and Colm Feore.
"Changeling" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for some
violent and disturbing content, and language. The film's duration is two
hours and twenty minutes.
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. 2008. All Rights
Reserved.