| CHANGELING (2008) : C.Eastwood : 5/10 : review ONLINE THU.27.NOV. |
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 IN A NUTSHELL : Middling, Oscar-oriented period melodrama doesn't do justice to a terrific true-crime tale. Having started the decade with one Oscar win - for 1999's Girl Interrupted - Angelina Jolie now clearly intends to end it in similar fashion with Changeling. It's subtitled "A true story" - but Woman, Interrupted would have been more appropriate - not only in terms of the plot (once again, Jolie's character finds herself behind bars in a mental-institution) but also as an admission that the main purpose of proceedings is to provide further goldenware for Jolie's sideboard. The picture even features a scene where her character Christine Collins cheers the success of It Happened One Night while listening to 1935's Academy Awards. As the Los Angeles switchboard-supervisor whose search for her missing son eventually sparked major upheavals in the corrupt LAPD, Jolie - while hardly a ringer for the real-life Collins (think a youngish Patricia Routledge) - is engaging. But while director Clint Eastwood gives his star expansive screen-time in an overlong 142-minute enterprise, she did rather more with rather less in last year's underexposed A Mighty Heart. And she's arguably outshone here by supporting players John Malkovich (operating at three-quarter power as Gustav Briegleb, a socially-conscious radio-preacher) and 13-year-old Eddie Alderson (as a traumatised kid.) Ironically, if Changeling* had been sharper all round - and a rewrite and/or re-edit wouldn't have gone amiss - Jolie's chances might have been stronger. As it is, the picture concentrates on Collins instead of exploring the intriguing implications and social/political ramifications of her fascinating tale. Indeed, if it wasn't for that early assurance about it being a "true story" (the closing titles admit considerable fictionalisation) the narrative would seem absurdly improbable. Five months after Walter (Gattlin Griffith, sweet) disappears, a boy (Devon Conti, so-so) - only vaguely matching his description - comes forward, claiming to be him. The LAPD, desperate for positive publicity, persuades a doubtful Collins that the kid must have changed as a result of his ordeal, and that she should take him home "on a trial basis." Collins' seldom-wavering skepticism results in her being carted off to a mental hospital - in a ward full of women who've caused the police inconvenience / trouble/ embarrassment. At this point the movie - previously a solid if over-conventional period page-turner - lurches into cliche-ridden, histrionic melodrama. And it only partially regains its footing after Briegleb (thanks to a literally last-second intervention) manages to rescue Collins from electro-shock treatment - her tale then becomes one of crusading rectitude, climaxing in some hokey courtroom sequences. There's considerable potential here, not least in the creepiness underlying the basic notion of the "changeling" - touched on only very briefly, when the bad-seed interloper irks Collins by insisting on calling her "mommy." As it goes on, one senses that considerable liberties are being taken with the facts of the case - indeed, it might have been more interesting if the names and circumstances had been altered and the Collins figure really did turn out to have been delusional after all. But Eastwood (whose self-penned score is unimaginative and intrusive) and his scriptwriter J Michael Straczynski don't seem to trust their story's intrinsic strengths. They can't resist adding countless very "movie-ish" moments - such as when Jolie passes a newspaper-seller just as he shouts out disturbing news about her son, and just happens to faint into the arms of her friend Gustav Briegleb. And while the attention to detail in terms of cars, architecture and clothing is first-rate, it's distracting that (as in last year's Leatherheads) hardly anyone seems to smoke. Fans of "film flubs", meanwhile, will get a kick out of the last scene - which takes place on the same February evening as the Oscar ceremony, but shows streets bathed in bright sunshine: It Happened One Morning, if you like. This gaffe is especially unfortunate, as Tom Stern's cinematography is one of the picture's consistent plusses - presenting an alluringly high-contrast evocation of a brownish-sepia past. Straczynski's script, however, deals much more black vs white: anyone who helps Collins is wonderful, angelic; anyone opposing her, evil. Two-dimensional characterisations abound - police-captain J J Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) might as well sport horns and cloven hooves. He's one of several stinkingly rotten apples in the LAPD exposed by the Collins case - but surely this particular institution is more an example of a badly-constructed 'barrel.' A decades later, the department would lapse into worse examples of brutality and corruption - and its recent history isn't exactly edifying. See LA Confidential, Dark Blue - and wonder what James Ellroy might have done with this particular story. Like Christine Collins, we're asked to accept a second-rate simulacrum - in this case, an imitation of a proper, intelligent, adult-oriented movie. She didn't stand for it - why should we? Neil Young 27.Nov.08 * Not to be confused with The Changeling - neither the 1662 revenge-tragedy by Middleton and Webster, nor the 1980 chiller starring George C Scott and directed by Peter Medak. "In West European folklore and folk belief, a changeling is the offspring of a fairy, troll, elf or other legendary creature that has been secretly left in the place of a human child." -------------------------------------------------------------------- USA 142m (BBFC timing) director : Clint Eastwood (Letters From Iwo Jima, Flags of our Fathers, Million Dollar Baby, etc) editors : Joel Cox (Tony Bennett - The Music Never Ends, Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of our Fathers, etc) Gary D Roach (Tony Bennett - The Music Never Ends, Rails & Ties, Letters from Iwo Jima, etc) seen 24.Nov.08 Newcastle (Empire cinema : press show)  |
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