Changeling

“He’s the director behind the most remarkable late-career run in history. She’s the superstar who has never met a role she couldn’t turn into a personal showcase.”

                                                        Tom Carson—GQ

Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie, opened in New York City on the same weekend as Synecdoche, New York, both films receiving an equal share of wildly divergent reviews. Synecdoche got a big “thumbs up” from Manohla Dargis in The New York Times, calling it “one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart.” Rex Reed’s assessment: “You’re forced to take back every prematurely made prophecy about ‘the worst movie ever made.’ Because no matter how bad you think the worst movie ever made was, you have not yet seen Synecdoche, New York. It sinks to the ultimate bottom of the landfill, and the smell threatens to linger from here to infinity.” On the Eastwood film Reed wrote: “Don’t miss Changeling, an absolutely true and overwhelmingly gripping saga of how crime and police corruption in 1920s Los Angeles led to a life-long ordeal for a single mother named Christine Collins, a career-defining role for Angelina Jolie.” He went on to say, “Changeling is the real deal, as good as any film Eastwood has ever made, and 10 times more electrifying than most. It grabs you by the throat and never lets go.” Dargis, who had viewed Changeling at Cannes last May, basically dismissed it in a short review back then. In his full review, A.O. Scott of the Times, concurrent with the New York opening, found it “especially disappointing.”

When I caught Changeling three weeks prior to its New York opening, one word popped into my mind as the credits rolled, and that was “perfect!” I really thought the entire film from beginning to end was perfect. That’s not to say I thought it was a masterpiece (I don’t), but I do think it’s one of the year’s best films. And then, before I started to write this piece, the weekly reviews started coming out, and many of the New York reviews were largely negative or mixed toward negative. (Subsequently, Chicago and L.A.’s main papers were all positive.) I was really surprised at the negative ones. Or so many of them, that is. Since then the dailies have been a bit better, more like mixed toward positive. There seems to be a bias toward Jolie (in the thumbs-down ones) for having chosen this role (or that’s how I read it) and how the story in this film about the mysterious disappearance of her son reflected on her own real-life narrative as a mother. Not that she’s lost a son, mind you. There also seemed to be resentment toward her “going for the Oscar.” Phew. Many signaled that they knew she’d probably win the Oscar or come close, and they didn’t think she deserved it. They spit out stuff along the lines of “Oscar Bait” (or similar) for both her and the film. So many others found the story improbable but had to admit in the next breath that it was, oh that, based on a true story. Small detail. Meantime, business in very limited release the first week and wider in the second week has been terrific.

Many of the negative reviews didn’t like that Clint made this all look like a horror film, even though (in most cases) they knew Eastwood himself had stated that this was a horror film and he directed it as such. Here’s a great line where A.O. Scott bends himself in half: “Some of the performances seem overstated to the point of caricature, but to the extent that Changeling is a horror movie, such exaggeration makes sense.”

I found Angelina Jolie to be truly remarkable in this film. John Malkovich (as a radio preacher who befriends Christine) playing spectacularly against type amazed me. Kudos also to the rest of the talented and large cast, including Jeffrey Donovan, Colm Feore, Amy Ryan, Michael Kelly, Jason Butler Harner, and the amazing child actors.

I’d like to conclude with Todd McCarthy’s praise at the beginning of his rave review from Variety after having seen the film at Cannes. “A thematic companion piece to Mystic River but more complex and far-reaching, Changeling impressively continues Clint Eastwood’s great run of ambitious late-career pictures. Emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed, this true story-inspired drama begins small with the disappearance of a young boy, only to gradually fan out to become a comprehensive critique of the entire power structure of Los Angeles, circa 1928. Graced by a top-notch performance from Angelina Jolie, the Universal release looks poised to do some serious business upon opening late in the year.” And so it has. Take that, naysayers! Not that it makes any of you wrong either. And not that business has anything to do with artistic achievement. And, as a friend of mine in the press once said, if there was only one opinion about any work of art, you’d really only need one reviewer.

                                                           Jim Baldassare