Changeling
Reviewed By Rich Drees
The one true horror film opening this weekend is Clint Eastwood’s
Changeling. While the movie contains a deranged serial killer,
it is not his acts that the film dwells on. Instead, the real
avenues of real horror in the film are twofold. The first is the
gut-wrenching, primal fear felt by a mother searching for her
missing child. The second is the more intellectual kind, as we watch
how this woman is threatened and abused by those with whom we as
society have entrusted authority and our safety.
Christine
Collins (Angelina Jolie) is a single mother in 1928 Los Angeles. One
evening, after working an extra weekend shift as a supervisor at the
telephone company, she comes home to find that her son Walter is
missing. The police launch a search and after five months a boy
matching Walter’s description is found in DeKalb, Illinois and
promptly put on a train west. However, the boy that steps off the
train is not her son.
Already
besieged with a tidal wave of bad publicity, the LA police
department pressures Collins into taking the boy in. When she asks
them to continue the search for her son, they refuse, saying that
the boy they returned to her is her son. Despite dental records and
the testimony of teachers and classmates who don’t recognize the
boy, the police continue to refuse to recognize their mistake. When
she starts to become a little too public with her allegations,
police Captain J. J. Jones, played to slimy perfection by Jeffrey
Donovan, has her committed to a psychiatric hospital. Fortunately,
Collins has an ally in the form of a minister (John Malkovich), who
uses the burgeoning medium of radio to crusade against the
corruption in the city’s police department.
A former journalist turned television writer and producer,
screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski methodically takes us through
Christine Collins’ story point by point, neatly and efficiently. (Straczynski’s
script circulated with newspaper accounts and city hall records
documenting the outrages to which Collins was subjected to remind
readers that her story is true.) Such storytelling
straightforwardness is backed up by Clint Eastwood’s low key
direction. Even the mid-film revelation that Walter‘s disappearance
might be connected to be a much darker and sinister crime is handled
in such a way that the development never feels like it is coming out
from left field. While Jolie may play some early scenes for a bit
more melodrama than called for, the film does a good job at slowly
raising one’s sense of shock and outrage at how Collins’ is treated
by the Los Angeles police and City Hall.
Part of the
reason that Collins is treated this way is her status as a woman in
the 1920s. Although they had been given the right to vote in 1920,
women were still very much considered second-class citizens. The
police and city officials expect Collins to quietly accept what they
tell her because, after all, they are men and she is just a member
of the weaker sex. Her incarceration in a mental hospital is all the
more frightening when she discovers that many of the other women in
the ward have also been guilty of being a potential embarrassment to
the police force.
Special note
needs to be made of Jason Butler Harner‘s mesmerizing performance as
Northcott, the perpetrator of the Wineville Chicken Coop murders. He
captivates the screen in his every scene, fascinating with his
ability to naturalistically slide back and forth between a calm,
rational young man and a wide-eyed, maniacal killer without ever
appearing cartoony or two-note. |