Angelina Jolie @ Changeling Premiere

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1st part

Cannes Review: Changeling

Posted May 20th 2008 10:01AM by Kim Voynar
Filed under: Drama, Cannes, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Angelina Jolie, Cinematical Indie

Clint Eastwood’s Changeling (which may or may not be now known as The Exchange), is a riveting drama about a missing boy and the undying constancy of a mother’s love. Angelina Jolie excels in a powerful performance as Christine Collins, whose nine-year-old son, Walter, disappeared in 1928. Five months later, police returned to her a boy they said was Walter; Christine alleged that the boy was not her son.

At the time, the Los Angeles police department was under considerable pressure due to the efforts of a Presbyterian minister, Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malcovich), to expose corruption within the police force. Captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), who heads up the investigation, doesn’t particularly care whether the boy is or isn’t Walter Collins; he has a publicity campaign to manage that’s all about making himself look good, so he tries to convince Christine to accept the found boy as her son. When she fights back by going to the press, Jones has her committed to the psycho ward.

The film is based on a the true story of the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders in the late 1920s; Gordon Stewart Northcott molested, tortured, killed and dismembered 20 or so young boys on his rural farm before his nephew confessed to police what was taking place there. Because the film is based on real events, we know going in how it’s going to end; the film’s tension rides, therefore, not in the destination but in the journey to get there. Eastwood controls the film’s pacing with a careful touch, letting us feel Christine’s anguish, and taking us all the way down into her dark night of the soul before granting the emotional release at the film’s somewhat redemptive end.

Jolie portrays a classic tragic heroine in the film; a single mother abandoned by Walter’s father, she’s raised her boy alone, and he’s all she has. Her reaction to Captain Jones’s refusal to accept that the boy the police have brought home to her is not her son goes from earnest insistence to stark disbelief to anger. The police captain, unwilling to acknowledge the failings of his department, makes her the enemy rather than the victim, alternately painting her in the press as a negligent mother who simply doesn’t want to take responsibility for her son now that he’s found, or perhaps a hysterical woman with delusions of paranoia.

This is a case of real life being stranger (or perhaps, more horrific) than fiction. If a screenwriter had written a script like this that was purely fictional, audiences would find it hard to accept. It seems rather fantastic to imagine that the police wouldn’t simply believe a mother who says, this is not my child. Of course she would know her own child; I’d know any of my kids in a pitch black room, by the outline of their profiles, the feel of their hair, their unique scents. It’s important to keep in perspective, though, that the film takes place in 1928, during a time with corruption on the police force was rampant, women were viewed as emotional and prone to bouts of hysteria, and people could be locked in a mental hospital to get them out of the way of those in power.

Anytime a film centers on the idea of a child in peril, the dramatic tension stakes are raised accordingly, but the conflict in the film works on many levels: in Christine facing the police captain; in the captain versus the preacher; in good cop versus bad cop; and, of course, in the broader theme of Christine facing the challenges women of that time faced in society generally. Watching that very real history play out — the whole, “there now, be a good girl, keep your mouth shut and just do as you’re told” mentality, rankles me to my very core, as I expect it will to most modern women watching it.

Eastwood relies largely on the strength of Jolie’s performance to carry the film, playing up the bully-victim relationship to the hilt to create a sense of opposing forces crashing into each other. Jolie’s mama-lioness performance is powerful — she plays Christine as both strong and vulnerable, a woman who is both tethered to the restraints of the society in which she must maneuver, and fiercely resilient in her search for the truth about what happened to her son. Jolie’s performance evokes her stylistically similar performance in A Mighty Heart; she spends most of the film wrenched in anguish that resonates to the core. In the latter third of the film, Christine undergoes a dramatic shift from the tragic woman who’s lost a child to a heroine who must advocate for the rights of other women in similar situations, and one can’t help but draw parallels to Jolie’s own personal activism.

Meli #85–Meli @ 05/20/2008 at 2:34 pm The dress,what dress?Look at that face!!!!!!!!!
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I love your post!!!

Had to go to work, but am back–sure does take a while to get through all these posts.

One thing: For any of you who watched the Cannes Cam, did anyone follow the end of the movie and how the stars leave? I checked the cam too late but am wondering how they get out without being mobbed.

I predict there will be several actresses and starlets trying to get pregnant by the end of the year, so they can walk next year’s red carpets with large baby bumps.

Wow, they just exude power and grace. Brad looks sexxxxay once again in the tux. Angie is beautiful and choice of dress is appropriate given that the woman is in her 3RD TRIMESTER WITH TWINS!!! I think some of you complaining about the dress being a bad choice are really funny. I bet most of you wouldn’t even be getting out of bed let alone, attending all these functions and doing it with grace, presence and with a smile on your face, if you were in the same situation. LMFAO.

Love Brad holding the umbrella too. Sweeeet.

Hello to all the JP fans too! I see you had your hands full today with trolls. As for the kiss, it is clearly a friendly greeting type of kiss. Nothing scandalous or risque’. It just goes to show the trolls are looking for absolutely ANYTHING to latch onto to try to bring them down. Too bad they are too dumb to know it won’t work. Secretly they all wish it was them kissing angie!

# 531 passing Through @ 05/20/2008 at 8:48 pm
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Hey, PT…

That AH douche was blowing smoke. The Insider was practically a lovefest for Angelina. They showed the OK cover, claiming that Angelina is due in 4 weeks; pics of Maddox swimming; the KFP photocall when Dustin made that crack about Angelina choosing between him and Brad.

The fact that the hosebag lied just proves how the JPs’ happiness has gotten underneath its skin.

Anyway, I am happy that the movie is getting good reviews.

she has all of her kids under that tent….lol,

Do not adore that dress but she still look beautiful.
With these rave reviews keep coming out, I’m really keeping my finger cross that Angie will not be rob again from Oscar next year.

I think someone posted this version of the interview today that Was in English . I believe it was on the last thread for those who have difficulty understanding whatis said because they have someone in French speaking while they are answering the question in English.

#543: hey, brownie. Who cares about her arms? We care about her face and Brad cares for the other parts. You can have the arms and legs if you want but we got dibs on the lady’s most exciting features.

You can’t turn us off even with all the criticisms and the trash talk. We love her! We love every part of her, veiny or otherwise.

You love big noses and heavy jaws, close-set eyes and fakery (blonde hair, blue contacts, male hormones, etc.). To each his own. Live and let live and all that. Good luck with your choice. Leave us alone with ours.

WOW…Just watched the dinner date/caressing video…HOTNESS! Holy smokes!! I think Brad hit it before they left, and AJ must have had a flashback. LMAO They just are so loving…they are like hand in glove.

So cute that Brad signed that little kids picture. He is such a sweety.

Oh, and I just wanted to add — the vid of Shi in the store - just in that clip, you can tell a LOT about her personality..liek AJ said, I can see her being ‘a little bit of trouble,’ she was looking at all those lenses pressed up against the glass, probably calling her name and making her come to them…she was fascinated. That one shot, AJ has her hand, and she pops her hand out - like let go mommy, and goes back toward the window and her audience, all Miss Independent, then Brad come along and picks her up like that’s enuf Missy. LOL. I think Shi’s been bitten by the bug. lol

CUTE!!

Angie is a huge tent!!

Love them!

Clint Eastwood could win the Palme d’Or for his Angelina Jolie pic (whatever the title is)

“Clint Eastwood is by far the most famous bridesmaid” at the Cannes Film Festival,” declares Richard Corliss of Time magazine, dishing the iconic director’s latest fest entry, titled either “Changeling” or “The Exchange,” (read more about the confusion HERE.) “Since 1985, this Hollywood legend has brought five films to Cannes — not as special screenings, where he Clint_eastwood_angelina_jolie 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.”

But “this session of Cannes . . . is a relatively weak one,” Corliss adds. “Eastwood’s most acclaimed competitor so far is the Israeli animated documentary ‘Waltz With Bashir’ . . . . 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 lead actor Oscar for ‘Mystic River’ and may think he owes Clint a favor.”

This drama about a defiant single mother (Angelina Jolie) in 1920s Los Angeles who fights to find her kidnapped son is garnering rave reviews from Time to Variety, which hails it as an “emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed” pic that “impressively continues Clint Eastwood’s great run of ambitious late-career pictures.”

Check out our video review by L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan, who declares, “This is a powerful film. It’s a brooding film. It’s a hopeful film. It’s the kind of traditional storytelling we’ve come to expect from Eastwood, but it’s also got an emphasis on a mother’s love, which is not the kind of stuff we usually think of from him.”