Clint Eastwood: Changeling

CLINT EASTWOOD: CHANGELING (2008)

(This is my review from the NYFF thread, reprinted here because the movie is in general release.)

A warped killer, a lost child, and a corrupt LAPD: what's not to like?

Changeling has a lot going for it in the eyes of the public just being directed by Clint and starring Angelina. Moreover the little-known but true LA story it tells is heartrending. A hard-working single mother in 1928, Christine Collins (Jolie) is forced to work on Saturday in her job as an assistant supervisor at Pacific Telephone and she leaves her young son Walter (Gattlin Griffith) at home. When she comes back he's gone. Five months later the police produce her son, found in another state--only she denies it's her son. The LAPD's reputation is on the line, and they force Christine to take the boy home. Then they try to discredit her as a lazy and unfit mother when she keeps insisting the kid isn't hers. Eventually she tangles more and more with the LAPD, who're going through an especially lawless period under a corrupt chief. They've shot down a lot of criminals in cold blood and swept away the bodies--just so the Force can control all the crooked dealings in town. Their arch-enemy and leader of the public outcry against cop corruption is crusading minister Rev. Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), who seizes upon the Collins case when it becomes public, smelling a rat. After Collins has repeatedly opposed the cops and refused to accept the boy delivered to her--who's three inches too short and circumcised, has different dental work and is unrecognized by his schoolteacher--a willful Irish Captain assigned to this case (Jeffrey Donovan) orders her locked away in a psych ward. A lurid story of child abductions emerges.

Changeling, in the screenplay written by J. Michael Straczynski, is based on contemporary press accounts of what are called the "Wineville Chicken Murders." The mystery of Walter Collins' disappearance vies with the story of police corruption and the secret of the murders for attention, but Strazzynski wisely tells the tale from the viewpoint of Collins' mother, a kind of feminist heroine, since at a time when women tended to keep their mouths shut, she will not be silenced and never gives up. Some of the more gruesome details of the Wineville story are omitted, but sequences that go there still have a horror movie cast to them. The rest is a thriller-cum-police procedural with distinct period sociological elements. But there is skillful handling in the way a far-reaching story begins and ends with the intimate experience of a bereaved mother.

Eastwood seems to have looked for a story on the order of Fincher's even lengthier Zodiac (this is 140 minutes), but the melodrama and focus on cop-crime in the material relate it to the James Ellroy-based films L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia. The psych-ward incarceration sequence takes you straight back to Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor--at which point things are beginning to seem pretty lurid, and the film almost as manipulative as Fuller's. Nonetheless the style has Eastwood's usual current elegance and clarity. Oxymoron it may seem, but this film is an example of lurid restraint. After all, this is after all a tale in which manipulation is being consciously looked at. In an interview at the NYFF, Eastwood pointed out that there was a link with movies like Gaslight that deal with people trying to bend the minds of others: this is what the crooked cops try to force on Catherine, and they win to the extent that she takes the other boy home. And this is the most interesting and unusual aspect of the story.

The acting is confident, if varied. There are a bunch of young boys who turn in strong, convincing performances, and as manipulative police captain and his chief, Jeffrey Donovan and Colm Feore are reasonable, and Michael Kelley appealing as the good cop who unearths the kidnappings. Newcomer Jason Butler Harner gives a distinctive performance as the wigged-out killer, Gordon Northcott. Amy Ryan is typically strong as another victim of the cops' psych ward incarceration scam. Less successful is John Malkovich in Marcelled wig as the crusading religionist Rev.Briegleb: he just seems too mannered and creepy. Jolie is good, though her appearance is a bit strange: that huge mouth goes oddly with 20's hair styles. At one moment after she was out of the psych ward, I thought she might be locked up a second time--for overacting. Harner gets his chance to chew up the rug himself in his final scene. A little holding back would not have hurt.

The film is outstanding in its period look; and good, if not perfect, in its period feel. If nothing else you'll remember Catherine Collins quaintly gong back and forth along the lone line of phone operators she supervises--on roller skates. Whole neighborhoods were restored by the filmmakers and streets filled with Model T's and, best of all, old trolley cars. The attempt at period lingo might have been more consistent; but that's a goal rarely achieved. Since the time scheme runs from 1928 to 1935, more mention of the Great Depression surely would also have been in order. Since the screenplay sticks to known facts, there is nothing about Jolie's character before or after the events. This is a good and watchable film, but not up to Eastwood's terrific 2003, 2004 and 2006 efforts. Presented as the mid-point film of the New York Film Festival, already well-publicized at Cannes, Changeling opens nationwide October 31st. Eastwood has already directed two more films, one of which, Gran Torino, he stars in. At 78, Clint still seems unstoppable.

DISCUSSION

OSCAR JUBIS: I watched Changeling and I hope everyone else who posts here checks it out. Eastwood is one of our best Hollywood directors and his latest exhibits all the virtues of solid, mainstream Hollywood storytelling and production values. That's the overriding thought I had walking out of the theater after watching it. It has an epic quality to it, an earnestness, a sense of conviction about what it's bringing into the open. I like it less than Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, which made my year-end Top 10s. I think it compares well with Flags of Our Fathers and Mystic River. It's gonna be a sad day when Eastwood stops making movies.

CHRIS KNIPP: Clint is a remarkable individual, very much in good form as was obvious when we saw and heard him answer our questions at Lincoln Center a month ago after the press screening. He has certainly not stopped making movies and he has two coming. This one is indeed well made in many ways and in view of the level of current offerings is certainly a must see for any fan of mainstream American filmmaking. But it's not quite satisfiying; it's Clint's least good of late--though comparison with Flags of Our Fathers may be apt, I found the latter more involving. The Changeling story is rather extraordinary--as lurid as any of James Ellroy's, but in essence true. I found the insane asylum segment reminiscent of Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor. Angelina unfortunately is shrill and tense. As others in the press have commented, the best thing about Changeling is the period flavor, particularly in the street scenes, with the street cars and automobiles lovingly assembled.

MORE DISCUSSION OF CHANGELING

OSCAR JUBIS: The psych ward scenes reminded me most of Frances (1982) with Jessica Lange as actress Frances Farmer, a role for which she received an Oscar nomination.
I'm looking forward to Clint's other 2008 release.

CHRIS KNIPP: That too, but the other two are more period and lurid, as I recall. Clint stars in the next one.

OSCAR JUBIS: *I'm not sure what you mean by "the other two". I think you mean L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia. Shock Corridor is perhaps "lurid" but, of course, not a period film. It's set in in the present (1963) and it exposes both psychiatric institutions and American society in general. I didn't find it as wrenching as the psych ward scenes in both Frances (set in the 1940s) and Changeling. Perhaps the first Hollywood film to bring into the open the horrors of psychiatric institutionalization was The Snake Pit (1948). It's a very good film with a superb performance by Olivia de Havilland.

CHRIS KNIPP: I certainly think that both L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia are better than Changeling, even though The Black Dahlia got bad reviews. I do not like Changeling and I do not think it will be remembered. I also don't like lurid depictions of psych wards. Of course it's horrible to see sane locked up with deranged patients. A psych ward seems to be quite capable of making an insane person more insane. The funny thing about Changeling is that it apparently depicts true events (though perhaps not much is actually known about them in detail), and yet it seems very Hollywood and artificial. It's a decent movie, polished in its way, with lovely period details, especially the exteriors, as I've mentioned. But it doesn't seem very memorable, and Angelina Jolie does not impress. The script isn't very good. Clint has made plenty of mediocre movies. He's also made some great ones. This isn't one of those. Maybe the reason why I don't agree with you about Mystic River and find it much better is that the Lahane novel is good material well handled by Brian Helgeland, who has done mediocre movies (like Blood Work, maybe Eastwood's last purely routine effort) but also notably L.A. Confidential. Nonetheless I do see the justice of your remarks about Changeling--"Eastwood is one of our best Hollywood directors and his latest exhibits all the virtues of solid, mainstream Hollywood storytelling and production values." There's no quarreling with that.

The two more that he has already directed are The Human Factor and Gran Torino; he also stars in the latter. In this he is remarkable. He's just a year and a half short of 80, and he's not just making movies, but making big complicated Hollywood productions, wrangling superstars, and acting in them himself. He's the kind of star you want to get a look at up close just to see if he's real. At the screening where he appeared afterwards I sat next to and met the gossip columnist of the New York Daily News, who I discovered has pretty progressive views.

Finally saw this on DVD through Netflix. Made my top ten movies of the year list. Great set design and period piece. Angelina Jolie was perfect in her role that ironically was perfects too good because I was at times repulsed and at times captivated by her acting (but the repulsion may have only been because of the brilliance of the script and her acting). There was so much in terms of plot and structure - from kidnapping, police cover-up, murder-crime-drama, insane asylum, and the linging what actually happened drama. It was amazing that all this could have been captured in one movie. Among the best of Clint Eastwood's works.