Changeling, directed by Clint Eastwood
If you like the idea of an unimaginative but well-made period drama in which a good woman fights for truth and justice against the odds - then you’ll be interested in Changeling. It’s based on the true story of Christine Collins, a single mother in 1920s Los Angeles whose son goes missing one day: when the police find Walter - or rather, a boy who say's he's Walter - Christine knows, and we know, that the boy is not her son. But the police bring all their power to bear not on the problem, but on Christine, in order to hush up the truth.
Angelina Jolie isn’t bad in the obviously award-grabbing role of Christine, the wronged woman; but her lips are the real stars, puckering, quivering, pursing and parting their way through all her trials with amazing gusto. John Malkovich can’t help being sinister even as a genuinely righteous preacher, but if you love him, I suppose you’ll love him here. Jeffrey Donovan is reasonably evil as the corrupt police captain Jones, but my pick of the actors is Jason Butler Harner, a Broadway regular who stands out as Gordon Northcott. I never think playing psychopaths, sociopaths or whatever they should be called is a good test of an actor – playing highly unusual personalities like that isn’t subtle enough to allow the best to show what they can do in terms of making a real, other person believable. But in a film of I thought unremarkable, bog-standard performances, his was best.
Artistically there’s nothing outstanding or even interesting about the film: Clint Eastwood’s direction is workmanlike, the script functional, and while the costumes and sets are gorgeous, right down to the rollerskates and wrinkles, the look of the cast and set is if anything too perfect: a lot of effort has gone into production design and costumes, and not enough, in my view, into the presentation of the material. Changeling is a standard-issue Hollywood glamorisation of a true story, reverent and utterly respectful, at times a little moving, but never surprising in the least. I was desperate for Eastwood to do something, anything, visually unexpected: once, I thought he was actually going to, but he let me down badly by cutting in a poignantly clichéd manner to a child’s drawing. I wanted to shout out from my seat.
Nor did I think the screenplay was anything but standard-mould stuff. Undermining the visual effort, the dialogue did nothing to convey the idiom or thought-patterns of the period – nor did I at any time get a real sense of the morals and ways of the 1920s. Worst of all, the characters are divided into such obvious good guys (mainly a good girl, I realise, but you know) and such obvious baddies that I actually lost trust in the truth of the underlying story. Can it really have been like this? Surely there were some people in the police who were simply blinded by the requirements of the system and unable to see things from Christine’s point of view. This script portrayed them all as actively and consciously wicked towards her. I’m not sure John Malkovich’s performance was a contribution to the team effort: he gave us hints that the pastor was a more self-seeking, ambiguous and interesting character than he appeared – more obsessive, at least. But I think he was acting against the script in this.
But enough carping. Changeling isn’t a great work or full of excitement, but I suppose it is a reasonably satisfying moral drama about a woman fighting the system.
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