BOOKS AND ARTS OCTOBER 23, 2008
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The first signs of trouble in Clint Eastwood’s period drama Changeling arrive early. Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a single mother in 1928 Los Angeles, readies her nine-year-old son, Walter, for school; heads to her job as a telephone operator supervisor (nice detail: the roller skates she wears to glide quickly from one end of the phone bank to the other); promises Walter she’ll take him to a movie on Saturday; etc. In his better films, Eastwood has taken care with such scene-setting, meticulously establishing the moods of working-class Boston or the rituals of the gym. Here, by contrast, there’s a rushed, tentative quality to Eastwood’s direction, perhaps even a slight discomfort with the rhythms of female domesticity. The exposition is too obviously expository. It’s a small fault, but it portends larger ones.
Christine is forced to cancel the movie date with Walter when she’s called to fill in for a sick colleague. She leaves the boy alone at home and, when she returns late in the day, he’s vanished. The police investigate but find nothing. It is five long, desperate months before her prayers are answered by a call from the LAPD informing her they’ve found her son traveling in Illinois with an adult drifter.
There’s just one problem: The boy who arrives back in Los Angeles is not her son. This fact is immediately evident to her (and to us), but the boy claims to be Walter and the police, eager to close the case, agree with him. “You’re in shock, and he’s changed,” the dismissive police captain (Jeffrey Donovan) hectors Christine, persuading her to take the boy home “on a trial basis.” There, Christine can’t help but notice that this stranger is three inches shorter than Walter was at the time of his abduction and that, unlike her son, he is circumcised. The police are unmoved. They send a doctor to affirm, again, that the boy is Walter; they respond to her declarations that of course she’d know if he were Walter, she’s his mother, by arguing that she is therefore “in no position to be objective.” When she finally tries to go public with her predicament, the captain has her locked in a brutal mental facility filled with other women who have, in one way or another, annoyed the police.
This is, to put it mildly, a fantastical story, the kind of dark, absurdist allegory that we might have expected to ooze from the pen of Kafka. It is also, remarkably, a true (or at least trueish) story, as the film announces in its opening moments. But it is not enough to declare such improbable material historically accurate and leave it at that. It is Eastwood’s burden to make it feel true, to overcome our skepticism at its innate outlandishness, and in this, Changeling is a singular failure. Scene after scene, twist after twist--and this is a film of many twists--rings false. I have been a fan (and defender) of Eastwood for as long as I can remember, but Changeling is a genuine stinker.
Some of the blame for this must fall on screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski. A TV veteran best known as the creator of “Babylon 5,” Straczynski struggles to find a key that does not sound like, well, science fiction. But the ordinarily sure-handed Eastwood provides little help. The film is so stylized it could at times be mistaken for a Coen brothers excursion--the too-perfect compositions; the vibrant color (Jolie’s lips look as though they were painted with the blood she used to wear in a pendant around her neck) transposed with muted, nearly black-and-white backdrops; the accents that push toward caricature (Donovan’s Irish brogue, in particular, seems to grow more pronounced as the movie progresses).
The film’s (many) villains are such exaggerated grotesques that in the end they are less frightening than profoundly irritating. In addition to Donovan, we’re treated to Colm Feore as the police chief, Denis O’Hare as the head doctor at the asylum, and a parade of Ratched-y nurses. Ironically, the least laughable portrait of evil is offered by relative newcomer Jason Butler Harner, who brings an unnervingly innocent charm to the role of, yes, a child-murdering psychopath who shows up midway through the film. On the rather less-populated White Hat side of the ledger, John Malkovich is cast against type, successfully though not memorably, as the Presbyterian minister who champions Christine’s cause, and Amy Ryan is characteristically appealing in the otherwise generic role of Feisty, Kind-Hearted Prostitute.
As for Jolie, her strong performance is put to weak use. To begin with, she faces the difficult task of creating a three-dimensional character in the two-dimensional world Eastwood and Straczynski have provided her. There are a limited number of ways to respond to sneering male condescension and she exhausts them fairly quickly. But Christine is a problematic character as well, too strong and stoic (one senses why Eastwood was attracted to this story) to have plausibly been badgered into taking home a boy she knew was not hers, yet too passive to make a compelling protagonist. For all her heroic endurance, this is a woman to whom things happen, not one who makes things happen.
I will not reveal the rest of the film’s monumentally overlong plot. The swerves it takes are consistently unreal (however real they may have been) and generally quite ugly, but they’re pretty much all it has to offer on the 140-minute journey to its hollow, cloying conclusion. (The last word spoken in the film is “hope.”) By the time it’s over, Changeling has proven itself not merely a contender for the worst film of the year, but a contender for the worst domestic tragedy, the worst conspiracy thriller, the worst serial killer flick, and the worst courtroom drama. It is that rare movie which, long after you think it’s exhausted the possibilities, keeps discovering new ways to fail.
Christopher Orr is a senior editor at The New Republic.
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18 comments
This reminds me of when Carlo ran away, and months later the shelter said they had a black male neutered cat, and he was all skinny and scared, and we took him home. Then when he fattened up and stopped being scared it was just obvious to me that it wasn't Carlo. Finally we checked for his microchip and it wasn't there. It was kind of a relief to me in one way, because how could Carlo change so much? I had started to resent the poor cat, whom we renamed Lucky. This movie looks just awful from what I've seen. But if it's a true story it should be fascinating. Especially because [unlike Lucky] the kid here is lying and trying to be some other kid. Maybe I should find and read the book. The book of Beautiful Mind was MUCH better than the movie.
- psantillana
October 24, 2008 at 1:51am
It may be a contender for worst movie of the year, but does it even compare to the atrocity that was The Happening? On a side note, I had the privilege of attending an early showing of Synecdoche, New York with a Q & A with Kaufmann afterward. It was amazing. He came across as very arrogant in the Q & A, giving the typical post-modern writer's answer to every question: I create the film, you intepret - I have no ulterior motive and no real source of philosophical/literary inspiration. He claimed to be producing a quality thoughtful exploration of death. With the number of explicit literary references in the film and beginning and ending it with allusions to Christianity, I found some of this innocent artificer stuff a little hard to take. However, it's a great film.
- martydenicolo
October 24, 2008 at 8:01am
I was a big bab 5 fan, but I must say that I was less impressed with Crusade, a difference I could never fully credit to interference by the network cited by JMS. And let's not even mention some of the B5 movies or the uninspiring "lost tales" (full disclosure, I buy them anyway in the hope of incentivizing Warner Bros to rekindle the magic). I honestly feel that JMS had a vision and talent comprable to Lucas (albeit on a different budget). However, like Lucas, he seems to produce his best work when there is more, rather than less, artistic tension between writer, producer and director.
- Nari224
October 24, 2008 at 8:47am
Oh, come on. Worse than The Happening?
- Toast
October 24, 2008 at 9:15am
Nari - I, too, was a really big B5 fan. But I see JMS as similar to Lucas in another way: he was a man with one story to tell - in his case, B5's Shadow war - and once that was done, he had nothing left to say. Like Lucas' work after "Jedi", everything after the war felt forced and uninspired.
- dhauck
October 24, 2008 at 12:28pm
ouch
- mmmm
October 24, 2008 at 4:52pm
I haven't seen "Changeling", and don't plan to; but is it really necessary to point out a howlingly obvious fact that should have hit Eastwood, and everyone else involved in the project, in the face from the start? Stories of long-lost people who mysteriously reappear after extensive absences, only to trigger is-he-or-isn't-he (please also read "she")debates, work dramatically if, and only if, the absence has been long enough to make confusion on the point believable. Try to imagine dramas such as "Anastasia" or "The Return of Martin Guerre" with a five-month absence, instead of one of many years, and the only reaction of the viewer would be to say: "That Dowager Empress/those French villagers must be the dumbest person/people ever born." It is also worth noting that the best serious drama on this subject -- Luigi Pirandello's "Right You Are (If You Think You Are)" -- explored the truly fascinating question of what happens if a misconstruction of identity is deliberately maintained by all parties concerned for ulterior psychological reasons. Maybe someone (such as Eastwood; God knows he has the talent)could film Pirandello's play someday; it's got three great roles for good actors.
- helios
October 24, 2008 at 5:09pm
Good God- the anger. Makes me want to write a review of your review. I never ceased to be baffled and amazed at how someone can shred a lot of hard work by a lot of people. In this particular film's case, I don't the polarizing effect it has on people. It's like the critic crowd was divided in two with screenings of two different versions of the same film. Whether you got A or B, try actually making a film instead of deriding someone else's efforts. YOU stink just a little bit.
- CoolHand67
October 24, 2008 at 5:11pm
I am sure that Mr. Eastwood is a very nice person, but he is for sure one of my least favorite directors. In Mystic River, Sean Penn overacted (and he would later show what a fantastic actor he is in 21 Grams under the gifted direction of Mr. Gonzalez-Iñarritu); Million Dollar Baby is one of the worst movies that I have ever seen; and Changeling is exactly at that level. The direction is sloppy, it is absolutely predictable, the villains are really bad, the heroes are really good, and the talents of Malkovich and Jolie are sadly wasted. It is beyond me why it was chosen to be the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival. Maybe they wanted to see Ms. Jolie up close?
- Jorge Suarez-Velez
October 24, 2008 at 7:33pm
"The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." It would appear that the problem with this movie is that it's staying *too* close to the facts, although I'd welcome the chance to do the research and see what's been invented and/or glossed over from dramatic purposes, and what's real. My brief dabbling in history, however, lead me to believe that no matter how stupid and cruel the villains are in this case, they're not going to be un-believably so.
- David B
October 24, 2008 at 9:03pm
Rushing away. In the light of a new song I like the perception of a sweet sensibility, the height of the season and a burning desire. Francesco Sinibaldi
- Francesco Sinibaldi
October 25, 2008 at 4:54pm
Sounds like more of Clint's shenanigans; he is attracted to odd, improbable concepts. Anyone remember when he was the heart transplant recipient of the female victim? Most of his movies seem pretty awful but he's got a talent for making people take it.
- Nabi
October 26, 2008 at 8:36pm
This is Eastwood's sole masterpiece since Unforgiven, and it's ironic that the critics and cynics here don't see it. Eastwood has made two terrible films that people seem to love; "Mystic River," and "Billion Dollar Baby," and one mediocre film "Flags of Our Fathers," against which the Japanese prequel/sequel outshined by a mile. Changeling is brilliant, riveting, and best picture of the year. And J. Michael is a better writer than most of what passes as such in Hollywood these days, with its huge number of forumala pastiches that critics are taken in by and show biz types excitedly hype like they mean anything. By the way, this movie stuck closer to the historic truth of this case than most films that "re-imagine" history. I'll make it easy for you. Go to Yahoo and type in "Wineville Chicken Murders." Sheesh.
- Van
October 27, 2008 at 11:37pm
Marty DeNicolo -- How was Samantha Morton?
- bbuckley
October 29, 2008 at 6:45pm
Having seen Angelina Jolie in a few films, she strikes me as the Second Coming of Joan Crawford--minus the shoulder pads. All she needs to complete the picture is an ashtray full of cigarette stubs and some ankle-strap shoes.
- Norval13
November 1, 2008 at 3:50pm
I strongly disagree that this film is a contender for the worst film of the year and it should definitely not be mentioned with regard to THE HAPPENING. CHANGELING reaches levels of emotion and depth that many films fail to reach these days. Eastwood has made a brave film, crafted very thoroughly, that has heavy tension and gravity to the story. Jolie's character is highly empathetic and compelling. It is her frustration in her situation that drives this film so firmly, and had me squirming in my seat.
- Lee
November 12, 2008 at 4:34pm
If we are meant to be impressed by any bozo who attempts to make a movie, we will end admiring Kicking and Screaming or Blades of Glory. If I pay to see it, I have every right to dislike it. It is not like they are doing it for charity.
- Jorge Suarez-Velez
January 10, 2009 at 9:56pm
*This made my Worst Movie List* Note to self - Don't see another Clint Eastwood or A Jolie movie ever again.
- That Girl
April 18, 2009 at 7:23pm