Disappointment, Part 3

My 100th post of the year!

My mother really liked Changeling. I really did not. (For the record, my father fell closer to my camp.) I so wanted to like it: Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby are two of the best movies I've seen this decade, and I've said more than once that Angelina Jolie was robbed of an Oscar nomination for A Mighty Heart. The storyline grabbed me, the trailers excited me. And yet ... Changeling was the biggest disappointment I've had at the cinema this year.

“Manipulative Oscar bait.”

Those were my first words after seeing Changeling, the kidnapping-turned-psych-ward-turned-serial-killer mystery starring Angelina Jolie in Mother Martyr mode. Changeling has the elements to succeed: director Clint Eastwood on a roll since 2003’s Mystic River, a compelling true story, Jolie coming from a triumphant turn in A Mighty Heart. Perhaps burdened by the weight of expectation, Changeling doesn’t connect.

(“Changeling” means “a child surreptitiously or unintentionally substituted for another.”)

In 1928 Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) comes home from work one day to discover her young son, Walter, missing. She badgers the police, who basically ignore her until they find her boy several months later - only Christine says it’s not him. The LAPD, fed up with her building accusations, throws her in a psychiatric ward; fortunately, Christine has an ally in radio preacher Brigeleb (John Malkovich, who sounds creepy but is really a good guy). Meanwhile, chilling activities are taking place at a ranch north of town.

Jolie has many scenarios to play and emotions to telegraph, yet she operates in only two modes: hysterical and beatific. She wails and screams “I want my son back” more than a dozen times, often in front of the “new” Walter, which seems cruel. Part of this problem lies with screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski’s repetitive dialogue, but Jolie should’ve varied her line deliveries more. Compare this with her performance in A Mighty Heart, where she found shading and nuance in Mariane Pearl, or with the work of Changeling co-star Amy Ryan in a small but effective role as Christine’s fellow patient.

With Changeling, Eastwood tries to make a Chinatown or an L.A. Confidential for our times. Where the cops were conflicted in L.A. Confidential, here they’re bad-boy caricatures personified by Jeffrey Donovan’s ever-present sneer. Eastwood signals “period” more with his star’s dolled-up face and fashionably cute hat than with the neat archival footage of L.A. streets and scenes of the roller-skating telephone girls. Eastwood, who also scored the film, uses the same three or four mournful piano notes to personify Christine, a very soap-opera move.

About an hour into Changeling, we stop watching the Angelina Jolie Show in favor of another storyline, that of a rancher (a leering Jason Butler Harner) luring young boys to his home and doing awful things. That reveal, more than any Christine moment, rivets one’s attention, thanks to Michael Kelly as the cop who stumbles upon the horror and Eddie Alderson as the teenager who opens the curtains to that vileness. Straczynski and Eastwood spend the second half of
Changeling bringing these tales together, with mixed success. The film goes on about 20 minutes too long, with ending after tacked-on ending.

Changeling declares itself “a true story,” not just “based on a true story;” despite Straczynski’s research and legal vetting, so much of the movie just rings hollow. It’s as if all the principals forgot a crucial part of moviemaking: subtlety.