Changeling

Dir. Clint Eastwood ,US, 2008, 142 mins

Cast: Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan

Review by Carol Allen

The phrase "directed by Clint Eastwood" has become almost a hallmark for a good quality movie and this one is no exception. It is a very engrossing, complex, moving and well-told drama with first-class performances.

It’s based on the true life story of single mother Christine Collins (Jolie). In 1928, her nine year old son Walter disappears. The Los Angeles police, desperate to appear to have solved the case, find a boy, whom they claim is Walter but Christine knows he is an imposter. When she refuses to accept him, the police incarcerate her in a mental hospital and she is only released with the help of an unusual knight errant in pastor’s clothing in the form of activist preacher Gustav Briegleb (Malkovich), who takes up her cause.

Jolie is very much at the centre of the film and though she is perhaps prettier and better dressed than the real life Christine would have been, she’s very convincing and moving in her distress and determination. The scene near the beginning, when she realises her child has disappeared, is particularly heart stopping, while the attitude of the police towards this woman or indeed any woman who challenges them is horrifying. The film throws a disturbing light on the corruption of the LAPD at that period. The way that the police chief (Colm Feore) and the officer supposedly investigating the case (Donovan), expect her to accept a substitute child, making no effort to test out the boy’s claim to be Walter, which he so patently isn’t and the way they treat her when she won’t give in, making outrageous suggestions that she is both an unfit mother trying to offload her responsibilities onto the public purse and then that she is mentally unstable, are both mind boggling and infuriating. There’s also a very effective performance from Amy Ryan as another victim of the infamous Code 12 referral, which gives the police powers to incarcerate in the mental hospital anyone who challenges them. While the brutal conditions in hospital itself are reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

The film has a good sense of period detail as in the telephone exchange where Christine works, where the supervisors go about their duties on roller skates for added productivity. There are also some excellent performances from the young actors in the film ― Walter himself, the somewhat sinister young imposter and another young lad, who is forced by his creepy, older cousin (Jason Butler Harner) to take part in some very nasty activities, which come to light, when efforts are finally made to find out what really happened to Walter. The development of the film is complex, but clear and often chilling, taking the story in unexpected and surprising directions, to the extent that you come out of the cinema feeling you’ve seen not one film but several, and the final confrontation between Christine and the man, whom she believes was responsible for Walter’s disappearance, is satisfyingly strong.