Angelina Jolie is a Cannes Changeling

From Time Mag

Clint and Angelina Bring a Changeling Child to Cannes
Tuesday, May. 20, 2008 By RICHARD CORLISS Angelina Jolie in The Changeling.
Universal Pictures / EverettArticle

At the wedding of art and industry that is the Cannes Film Festival, Clint Eastwood is by far the most famous bridesmaid. Since 1985 this Hollywood legend has brought five films to Cannes — not as special screenings, where he has nothing to lose, but in the ego-bruising competition for the top prize — and the first four times (with Pale Rider, Bird, White Hunter Black Heart and Mystic River he’s gone home empty-handed. It’s not that the old cowboy needs another trophy: he’s twice won Oscars for best director and best picture, with Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby. Perhaps the businessman in him knows that his movies will get more free publicity when he stands on the Grand Palais steps, and his image is broadcast around the world, than he would if they were to win the Palme d’Or.

And so on Tuesday night he will stride across the red carpet, accompanied by that nonpareil paparazzi magnet Angelina Jolie, for the screening of Changeling. The speculation is that Eastwood has a better shot at winning this year because the head of the festival Jury is Sean Penn, who won the best actor Oscar for Mystic River and may think he owes Clint a favor. It’s also the consensus that this session of Cannes, where more than half the competing films have already been shown, is a relatively weak one, and that Eastwood’s most acclaimed competitor so far is the Israeli animated documentary Waltz With Bashir. We’ll see. Only the rash try to read the minds of the jurors, and every year’s awards list brings surprises and disappointments.

Changeling is an epic, fact-based story — depicting sadistic, systematic corruption in the municipal government, the police department and the medical establishment of 1920s Los Angeles — that has the novelty of being virtually unknown today. It juggles elements of L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia, The Snake Pit and any number of serial-killer thrillers. But at its center are the heartache and heroic resolve of a woman who has lost the one person she loves most and is determined to find him, dead or alive, against all obstacles the authorities place in her way. In that sense the movie is a companion piece to last year’s Cannes entry A Mighty Heart, in which Jolie played the wife of kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl — except that Changeling is far more taut, twisty and compelling.

Christine Collins (Jolie) works as a supervisor at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, where she patrols the operator bank on roller skates. She’s a conscientious employee, but her life is devoted to her nine-year-old son Walter (Gattlin Griffith), whose father walked out when the child was born. One day Christine returns home to find Walter missing. As the days and months drag on, his disappearance becomes big news, and when word comes that the boy has been located, the press is there en masse at the train station. Instantly she sees that this “Walter” (Devon Conti) is not her son; but the police insist that he’s Walter — case closed.

The officer in charge, Capt. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), dismisses Christine’s evidence of differences between the two boys: this one is a few inches shorter, his dental records don’t match Walter’s, his teacher doesn’t recognize him … and he’s been circumcised! When Christine presses her objections, Jones has her confined to the psychopathic ward of the Los Angeles Hospital, in the company of other women with the potential to embarrass the cops. (”If we’re insane,” says Amy Ryan as a prostitute subjected to electroshock therapy for her outspokenness, “nobody has to listen to us.”) Her only ally is a preacher and radio crusader, Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), who sees Christine’s case as another heinous example of the Police Dept.’s venality.

Meanwhile, a vagrant boy (Eddie Alderson, the best of a very strong bunch of child actors here) directs a police detective to a chicken ranch in Wineville, about 40 miles west of L.A. There, a Canadian named Gordon Northcott (nicely played by Jason Butler Harner as a man who tries to hide his darkest impulses under the aw-shucks amiability of a Gary Cooper rube) has committed atrocities on some 20 kidnapped boys. Are these crimes related to Walter’s disappearance? And if so, will the cops bring the matter into the glare of publicity, or suppress the awful information?

A movie with all these gruesome elements could easily be sensational. Maybe it should be. Maybe the telling should have a little flair, and a headlong rush toward dreadful truths. But that’s not Eastwood’s way. He just wants to tell the story, in uninflected, police-procedural fashion; the movie is like a flatfoot following a suspicious trail with no special intuition but an admirable doggedness. It doesn’t hurtle, it ambles.

Time Mag, continued

You will look elsewhere (on the Internet) for documentation about the Wineville Chicken Coop matter, and the criminality of then-Mayor George Cryer as a pawn of the Crawford mob, of the L.A.-wide corruption that makes Al Capone’s Chicago a shining city on a hill by comparison. Eastwood is after just the facts, ma’am — with occasional prime emoting from Jolie.

With flaring red lipstick on a face that hasn’t seen much time in the California sun, and with a grieving matched in severity only by her will to learn the truth, Jolie carries the burden of the first hour. As the story expands, and finds new avenues of real-life horror, Jolie can coast on the narrative instead of having to push it with her grit and tears. The movie becomes an ensemble piece, with a dozen or so character actors carrying the storyline. In other words, Changeling is exactly as good as its makings. By the end, with its purposeful accumulation of depravities, both individual and institutional, Eastwood’s non-style has paid off; the story’s weight could come close to burying you in despair.

You may ask: There’s that much evil in the world? And Clint, thinking more about storytelling craft than Cannes crockery, would say, Sure. But there are heroes too. And this time, the righteous gunslinger is a mom with no weapon but her inexhaustible love.

The hollywood reporter review is up…it’s very good too.

Bottom Line: Clint Eastwood again brilliantly portrays the struggle of the outsider against a fraudulent system.

For only the second time in his filmmaking career, Clint Eastwood’s celebration of the loner who bucks the system, the “cowboy” who demands justice without concern for personal jeopardy, settles on a heroine. Like Hilary Swank’s boxer in “Million Dollar Baby,” Angelina Jolie’s single mother, Christine Collins, takes every punch thrown at her and comes back fighting. Her combat is not in a boxing ring — where fighting is supposed to take place — but rather in a corrupt police department, psychiatric ward and the court of justice where she demands to know one thing: What happened to her son?

A true story that is as incredible as it is compelling, “Changeling” brushes away the romantic notion of a more innocent time to reveal a Los Angeles circa 1928 awash in corruption and steeped in a culture that treats women as hysterical and unreliable beings when they challenge male wisdom.

Jolie puts on a powerful emotional display as a tenacious woman who gathers strength from the forces that oppose her. She reminds us that there is nothing so fierce as a mother protecting her cub.
The combination of Jolie and Eastwood would ordinarily mean boffo boxoffice, but “Changeling” is a tricky movie to market as it touches on every parent’s greatest fear — the disappearance of a child — and is a period film that deals with a situation unimaginable in contemporary American society. Universal’s challenge is to make the film’s concerns connect with an audience more interested in the kind of police corruption usually found in Scorsese films.

In March 1928, Christine Collins’ nine-year-old son Walter vanishes. Five months later, the LAPD, already under the gun for other unsolved crimes, calls out the press and delivers to Christine a boy who claims to be her son but is not. To avoid embarrassment, Captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) demands she take the boy home on a “trial basis.” When she continues to insist that the LAPD needs to find her real son, Jones does what the department always does with troublesome citizens — he locks her up in a psycho ward.

A radio minister, Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), takes up her cause and challenges the police version of events. Meanwhile, another officer, Detective Ybarra (Michael Kelly), launches an investigation into a potential serial killer (Jason Butler Harner) that not only proves Christine’s contention but exposes the force, its chief and the mayor to the wrath of a citizenry feed up with living in a police state.

This story, uncovered by screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski in the city’s own records and newspapers, adds a forgotten chapter to the L.A. noir of “Chinatown” and “Hollywood Confidential.” Christine’s utter intransigence and true-seeking in the face of absolute corruption does what no newspaper in that city is willing to do — challenge the official stories of City Hall.

Sticking fairly closely to the facts, the movie necessarily drags us through a couple of courtrooms that cause the drama to sag momentarily. But Straczynski and Eastwood are good at cutting to the chase. Seldom does a 141-minute movie feel this short.

Jolie completely shuns her movie star image to play a woman whose confidence in everything she thinks she knows is shaken to its very core. She can appear vulnerable and steadfast in the same moment. This woman has a depth she herself has never explored.

Save for another incarcerated police victim played by the fabulous Amy Ryan, most other roles tend toward righteousness or badness without too many shades in between.

The movie draws considerable strength from Eastwood’s own melodic score that evokes not only a period but also the mood of a city and even a country nervously undergoing galvanic changes. The small-town feel to the street and sets, seeming oh-so-quaint to modern eyes, captures a society resistant to seeing what is really going.

So in “Changeling” Eastwood continues to probe uncomfortable subjects to depict the individual and even existential struggle to do what is right. Christine sees no other option. And in pursuing the truth, she forces a city to take a stand and demand accountably from its politicians and police. Her boy has been changed under her horror-stricken nose. But then again, so has she.

This is NOT her best look. And sorry to say, this movie, like AMH will NOT do well because of all her bad press. I feel sorry for Clint but he’s had a lot of other successes…he’ll get over this one.

Thanks for the pix, Jared. You be da man!

Angie in pants? Must have been too tired from the late night to make an effort with a dress…and she STILL looks beautiful. I think I hate her.

Also…just once…just once…could Brian Grazer surprise people and NOT do the c0ckatoo thing with his hair? He’s not Keith Richards. He’s not even a performer of any kind. Comb your damned hair, Brian!

i think she did’nt wash her hair….

She is gorgeous

jessO - He’s talking about Angie the actress.

PT - LOL! It does look like he stuck his thumb in an electric socket.

The fans did good work. Got Angie’s lawyer to demand the sites take down the pics. Good job!!!

# 107 challenged @ 05/20/2008 at 9:16 am

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okay, you say that now but we’re going to have the last laughs when this movie is a success. all of clint’s movies has been an incredible amount of success. this movie will just be same. havnt you been reading the reviews or comments posted?

Lou @ 05/20/2008 at 9:25 am
challenged @ 05/20/2008 at 9:16 am
billie @ 05/20/2008 at 9:25 am
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Someone is having a hard time “digesting” the good reviews :lol: I’m loving it!

Thankyou Faye88!

simply beautifull like always… but when is she with Brad, she´s shining more :-)

Oh lookie,some troll is using the name “Lou.”Can you be any more juvenile?

Angelina looks great,but damn her belly is big.I think she will be having these babies in July.Thank you to everyone who posted movie reviews!