Changeling

Changeling is a smashing-looking film, thoroughly competent in presentation, but has a serious flaw in the story structure. It basically asks its audience to maintain a level of outrage over two hours without let-up.

Angelina Jolie plays a single, working mother in 1928 Los Angeles. She comes home one day after leaving her nine-year-old boy alone to find him missing. She calls the police, and is told that they have to wait until someone is missing 24 hours before they can do anything (today this would not be the case, as minors are exempt from this buffer period, I'll take it that this was how it was then). This is Jolie's first hint that the police department will not be on her side.

Five months later the police say that the boy has been found, in Ilinois. When he steps off the train she immediately knows he is not her son (and so do we) but in a dazed state, she goes along with it. But when she realizes that this "changeling" is three inches shorter than her son, and is also circumcised, which her boy wasn't, she begins to make a stink. To avoid embarrassment, the corrupt police department has her committed to an asylum, and it's only through the aid of a muckraking pastor (John Malkovich) that justice is done.

That's a good story, and it's a true story (although I'm sure some details are different) but there's a problem: the entire arc of the story focuses on one question--where is her son? Since the audience knows that the police are in the wrong, and that Jolie is right, the film rests on that question, and it is answered relatively early in the going, perhaps at the half-way point in the film (when a close-up of an axe is shown, only the densest movie-goer won't put two and two together). We then are subject to an extremely long denouement. I thought the movie was over at one point but it still had a half-hour to go, and much of what transpires could have been covered in end titles. A more interesting film might have been if the identity of the boy was in question, and her sanity would have been an issue for the audience.

Jolie is the center of this film, and her performance is problematic. It's a very showy part, and she doesn't hold back on the emotions required. But her character remains something of a mystery. Aside from the first ten minutes, when we see her go through her day as a mother and telephone-operator supervisor, the rest of the film has her in a state of crisis, either dealing with a missing son or sparring with the police department. I hesitate to call it one-note, but it is one level. Toward the end, when she is discussing the upcoming Academy Awards (she has her money on It Happened One Night) the scene seems stilted and forced.

Also, Jolie is so glamorous it's a bit of a distraction. The film is photographed by Tom Stern in muted colors, but her famously plump lips, awash in crimson, stand out like a lighthouse beacon through thick fog. She does look great in the clothes, particulary the cloche hats she sports. I woudln't be surprised to see them influence today's fashions.

The supporting cast is mostly fine. Jeffrey Donovan is the corrupt captain who is behind the switch, and if he had a mustache he would twirl it. Jason Butler Harner gives a weird performance as a serial killer, putting the lie that those folks are indistinguishable from the rest of us. I was impressed with Eddie Alderson, a child actor who leads the police to the real killer.

Clint Eastwood is the director, but he directs without much imprint, except for his predictably austere music score, which he composed. I'm not sure what the through-line of this film was, other than "police bad, nice lady good." It's not enough to justify two-and-a-half hours of my life.