Review: Changeling
I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I never love a movie unless at some point, preferably in the early going, I think to myself, "What the hell is going on here?" Something has to really get me off kilter -- it can be a character, a performance, a shot, a setting, a plot development, whatever -- or the movie will quickly fade from my memory no matter how well it's made. I've been this way for at least 20 years. It's not that high a standard, really. Several movies a year meet it for me.
Clint Eastwood has met the bar, as a director, at least a couple of times. The vague sense of doom in Unforgiven, and the way in which Million Dollar Baby seemed to be taking place in the 1940s even though it was set in the present day, both got me intrigued. But it's been a while. For some reason, Eastwood's two Iwo Jima films won me over in concept but offered no real surprises on screen. His latest movie, Changeling, has the same strength and weakness.
Changeling takes place in late-1920s Los Angeles, which sounded good to a Western history buff. I trusted Eastwood (rightly) not to do this as a lot of flapper nonsense. And it's the story of a struggling single mother who finds her son missing and then gets him back, except that he doesn't look like the same boy. It sounded sad, mysterious, and spooky. I was sold.
I suppose if I'd gone in knowing absolutely nothing about the story I might have gotten one interesting slap in the face when the "wrong" boy showed up. But unfortunately, despite the utter strangeness of the story -- it gets weirder, and it's based on a real case -- it never passed the "whaaaat?" test. The facts of Changeling are almost hard to believe, but the way they're laid out for us is never really surprising.
In fact, the film eventually descends into the kinds of business we've seen too often on screen, and it's only Eastwood's classy film craft that keeps the film from descending into laughable cliche. There are good guys and bad guys, villains and innocent victims, and saviors who show up at the last minute. For all the earnest efforts here to tell a story about the place of women and the arbitrary power of authority in an less enlightened era, Changeling is a deeply old-fashioned movie.
That's not to say it's a bad film. The dialog is believable and not overcooked. The settings and behavior mostly feel right for the period. Angelina Jolie gives a credible performance as the anguished mother, only briefly coming across as a Movie Star With A Cause. John Malkovich is simultaneously caring and narcissistic as a crusading radio preacher.
But although Changeling isn't a Lazy Hollywood movie, despite some easy catharsis and a few too-perfect coincidences, it's never more than a Hollywood story. Unlike the characters in the movie, I saw it all coming a mile away.
Clint Eastwood has met the bar, as a director, at least a couple of times. The vague sense of doom in Unforgiven, and the way in which Million Dollar Baby seemed to be taking place in the 1940s even though it was set in the present day, both got me intrigued. But it's been a while. For some reason, Eastwood's two Iwo Jima films won me over in concept but offered no real surprises on screen. His latest movie, Changeling, has the same strength and weakness.
Changeling takes place in late-1920s Los Angeles, which sounded good to a Western history buff. I trusted Eastwood (rightly) not to do this as a lot of flapper nonsense. And it's the story of a struggling single mother who finds her son missing and then gets him back, except that he doesn't look like the same boy. It sounded sad, mysterious, and spooky. I was sold.
I suppose if I'd gone in knowing absolutely nothing about the story I might have gotten one interesting slap in the face when the "wrong" boy showed up. But unfortunately, despite the utter strangeness of the story -- it gets weirder, and it's based on a real case -- it never passed the "whaaaat?" test. The facts of Changeling are almost hard to believe, but the way they're laid out for us is never really surprising.
In fact, the film eventually descends into the kinds of business we've seen too often on screen, and it's only Eastwood's classy film craft that keeps the film from descending into laughable cliche. There are good guys and bad guys, villains and innocent victims, and saviors who show up at the last minute. For all the earnest efforts here to tell a story about the place of women and the arbitrary power of authority in an less enlightened era, Changeling is a deeply old-fashioned movie.
That's not to say it's a bad film. The dialog is believable and not overcooked. The settings and behavior mostly feel right for the period. Angelina Jolie gives a credible performance as the anguished mother, only briefly coming across as a Movie Star With A Cause. John Malkovich is simultaneously caring and narcissistic as a crusading radio preacher.
But although Changeling isn't a Lazy Hollywood movie, despite some easy catharsis and a few too-perfect coincidences, it's never more than a Hollywood story. Unlike the characters in the movie, I saw it all coming a mile away.
Labels: Changeling, reviews
posted by Steve at
6:19 PM
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