Retracing history in the movies
Changeling starring Angelina Jolie, Jeffrey Donovan and John
Malkovich
There is one true mark of real Hollywood talent
– and that is making us forget all the roles the celebrity has
played before as well as all the gossip surrounding their personal
lives.
Keanu Reeves has never done it for me, and even when he’s on
screen doing Shakespeare (
”
Much Ado About Nothing
”
), I only see Ted from
”
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
”
With Jennifer Aniston, I can only see Rachel Green. And now
whenever I see Tom Cruise in a movie, I just can’t stop thinking
about him jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch or screaming at Matt
Lauer.
Retracing history in the movies
Changeling starring Angelina Jolie, Jeffrey Donovan and John Malkovich
There is one true mark of real Hollywood talent – and that is making us forget all the roles the celebrity has played before as well as all the gossip surrounding their personal lives.
Keanu Reeves has never done it for me, and even when he’s on screen doing Shakespeare (“Much Ado About Nothing”), I only see Ted from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” With Jennifer Aniston, I can only see Rachel Green. And now whenever I see Tom Cruise in a movie, I just can’t stop thinking about him jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch or screaming at Matt Lauer.
When I went to see “Changeling” on a Sunday afternoon, I was concerned about Angelina Jolie as the lead actress. In a movie about a woman whose son goes missing I wondered how hard it would be to stop thinking about Jolie’s relationship with Pax, Maddox and the rest of the Jolie-Pitt brood. It’s probably intensified since I started reading really bad celebrity gossip rags at the gym so I know all about how Brad Pitt hired a therapist for Jolie’s depression and she almost didn’t make it to her movie premiere – or at least that’s what “OK” magazine reports.
But less than 20 minutes into the nearly 2 ½ hour movie directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, I stopped seeing Jolie and started seeing Christine Collins. It is a testament to not only Jolie’s acting ability, but to Eastwood’s ability to pull the best out of his cast and the screenwriter’s ability to make motivation of his character clear from the beginning.
he lastest movie from Eastwood is based on a true story and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski did his homework for the Depression-era movie. Straczynski researched city council archives, old copies of newspaper clippings and vetted out the true story of a woman whose son went missing in 1928. As all films do, the movie departs from a few facts for dramatic effect but it covers the gist of the story well.
Collins is a single mother who works for a telephone operating company and when she returns home one day her 9-year-old son is gone. At the time the Los Angeles Police Department has faced bad press from the local media, including the Los Angeles Times and the Rev. Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich) who does a weekly radio show about all the corruption on the force. Collins files a report, and continues to call departments across the United States for missing child reports, but hears nothing from the LAPD.
When Capt. J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) shows up at the telephone office one day, he says the officers found her son in Illinois and he is on the way home. The officers treat the event as an opportunity for good press. When Collins insists the boy is not her son when he steps off the train, the movie really gets going.
While the movie is about Collins’ struggle to get her son back it is more about a system of governance that denies people’s rights and finds experts to back up their faulty information. Collins explains to officers a few days later that the boy they returned to her is three inches shorter than her son was when he went missing and that this boy is circumcised and her son was not. A doctor comes to her home and says stress can cause a child to shrink, and the person who kidnapped the boy probably had him circumcised.
When Collins continues to insist the boy is not her son, Jones calls into question her abilities as a mother. Eventually, he calls into question her sanity and from there Eastwood shows some of the most disturbing scenes in the movie.
The story – in the movie and real life – takes a compelling turn when an LAPD detective discovers a man living in Riverside County who, with an accomplice, is believed to be a serial killer who preyed on young boys from the surrounding region, including Los Angeles. Only a few bodies were found, but it is believed the pair killed as many as 20 boys. Here the movie veers from the facts a bit, but in the end the officers are forced to admit their mistake over the boy from Illinois.
For anyone interested, the Los Angeles Times has posted many of the original articles about the Collins case on a blog called the Daily Mirror about Los Angeles history.
“Changeling” is sure to be up for a few Oscar nods next year.
