Changeling

When it comes to low-fuss, high-class filmmaking, Clint Eastwood is one of the best directors going.

Changeling is a return to the “woman’s picture” of The Bridges of Madison County and Million Dollar Baby, and is his most assured “one for the ladies” to date.

Invoking such classics as Mildred Pierce and Gaslight with an authentic feeling period recreation, Clint draws a captivating, Oscar-friendly performance from Angelina Jolie as a mother trapped in a parent’s worst nightmare.

Based on a disturbing true story, Mrs Brad Pitt is Christine Collins, a woman whose child disappears, but the real nightmare begins after the police claim to have found him.

Problem is the boy the police want her to take home “for a trial period” is not her son, but a publicity friendly happy ending for a tarnished and beleaguered police department.

Growing impatient with Christine’s troublemaking, Captain Jones (Donovan) first tries to dazzle her with medical explanations as to why her son has shrunk three inches, before throwing her in the loony bin.

Luckily for her, anti-LAPD firebrand Minister Briegleb (Malkovich) begins campaigning Christine’s case over the airwaves, but the horror grows worse when twitchy Gordon Northcott (Harner) enters the picture, with clues to what may have happened to the Collins boy.

Long, but perfectly paced, Changeling slowly unveils a time when parents would leave children unattended all day, police policy was to wait 24 hour hours before acting upon a missing child report, and the LAPD was core rotten (over twenty years before the true events recounted in LA Confidential). 

Eastwood, replacing original director Ron Howard, keeps sentimentality at bay with cool, autumnal coloured visuals matched by stony-faced and dispassionate cops and doctors who regard Christine’s obstinate quest for truth as an embarrassment.

The extended sequence in the Catch-22 maze of the Psychopathic Ward, a dustbin for troublesome women, and Mystic River style scenes of imperilled children convey the full horror caused by the LAPD's graft and callousness, and are tough watches in film written off by many US critics as disappointingly conventional.

Jolie looks every inch the star, but as with Joan Crawford or Ingrid Bergman, gives a believable and shining performance despite her beauty, while Malkovich hasn’t been this good in years.

A strong supporting cast, including Harner, Amy Ryan as a tough hooker teaching Christine how to out-psyche the corrupt shrinks and Michael Kelly as a cop willing to investigate deeper, have the faces for the period and never put a foot wrong.

Certain facts have been glossed up (the real boy was snatched after his mum sent him to the movies, not while she worked overtime), but this is a film whose glamorous leading lady and old-fashioned feel reveal a dark chapter in recent American history.

Rob Daniel