Changeling (Clint Eastwood, 2008)

[Antoine Doinel]

The trailer comes off as very.....dull. Not much here that really interested me. The most interesting aspect of the story for me, is the decoy child and relationship with the mother. I think in one of the stories Matt linked, it says she actually lived with the child and tried to make it work for a significant time (before finally acknowledging/realizing it wasn't her son) and I think therein is a much more interesting film. The corrupt LA police force angle has been done to death.

I also wondered why Jolie is made up as a femme fatale (pale skin, harsh red lipstick) -- I found it very distracting.

[Matt]

I also wondered why Jolie is made up as a femme fatale (pale skin, harsh red lipstick) -- I found it very distracting.

Seriously. Though the makeup is actually "correct" for the period, a California mother with that much makeup on in 1928 would have been considered a harlot.

[swo17]

Some might consider Jolie a harlot with or without the makeup.

[avner]

Seems like a disappointing follow-up to the beautiful Letters from Iwo Jima. The thriller-ish plot structure doesn't seem very interesting and the images look kinda bland. Could be the trailer's fault though. We'll see... Eastwood is one of the great artists, period.

[Gator]

Looks very powerful. Jolie, initially, looks almost unrecognizable, the trailer hooks emotionally, the production values look terrific, & as for what it's about, could that have been any more clearly communicated? Angelina Jolie wants her son back!

Interestingly, whoever put that trailer together has been careful to give away as little as possible (that business with Jolie in the loony bin, prominently featured in the trailer, accounts for only a handful of short scenes) & a parallel story strand isn't even mentioned. I was reminded in a way of the Million Dollar Baby trailer, which also gave little hint as to the surprises in store. As Todd McCarthy's Variety review said;

Fears that the story is now destined to veer off into “The Snake Pit” or, given Jolie’s presence, “Girl, Interrupted” looney-bin horrors prove largely unfounded, despite a couple of brief electroshock scenes. Rather, this is where the picture really spreads its wings, as ramifications of this tragic but unexceptional case seep through the police department, the legal system, the medical establishment and City Hall in entirely unexpected ways.

[Gator]

This just popped up

[karmajuice]

Based on that poster, I would expect to see Angelina Jolie starring in a remake of Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman, or possibly a remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[Gator]

Some new clips.

[domino harvey]

Bad buzz has begun

[Jeff]

Bad buzz has begun

Sounds like it's going to be divisive. I know Manohla hates it too. Glenn Kenny, Richard Corliss, Kenneth Turan, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter all liked it.

[Cde.]

Bad buzz has begun

Sounds like it's going to be divisive. I know Manohla hates it too. Glenn Kenny, Richard Corliss, Kenneth Turan, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter all liked it.

Time to sound the alarm bells then.

[Barmy]

One of the worst films ever made by a major director. The screenplay is retarded. The acting is embarassing. The story is boring and pointless. There is a corn flakes box that appears for 5 seconds that convincingly evokes the 20s.

[tavernier]

One of the worst films ever made by a major director.

Now people are going to flock to it, a la Sarris, to see if you were right! (I can't believe you paid "Centerpiece" prices for this....unless you snuck into the Zeigfeld somehow.)

[Barmy]

It was worth $40 just to be in the same room as Angelina lulz

[Mr Sausage]

There is a corn flakes box that appears for 5 seconds that convincingly evokes the 20s.

Cornflakes were created in 1894. Wikipedia even has an advertisement for the cereal from the 1910s. A large production like this helmed by a veteran filmmaker and no doubt an equally veteran crew is not going to miss something so glaringly obvious as an anachronistic cereal.

[colinr0380]

Waiting patiently for wisecracks about corny, flaky actors and directors with a 1920s vintage.

[Barmy]

I am not contending that the cornflakes box was anachronistic. But its appearance was smug and self-satisfied. "Look at meeeeeeee!!!! It's the 20s and I'm a vintage cornflakes box!!!!" Eastwood has become a Kelloggian, corny, flaky director.

[Highway 61]

I'm a big Eastwood fan, and even I knew this was doomed as soon as Jolie was cast. The bad buzz is hardly surprising.

[domino harvey]

There is a corn flakes box that appears for 5 seconds that convincingly evokes the 20s.

Cornflakes were created in 1894. Wikipedia even has an advertisement for the cereal from the 1910s. A large production like this helmed by a veteran filmmaker and no doubt an equally veteran crew is not going to miss something so glaringly obvious as an anachronistic cereal.

Jesus. Has the board really come to this? Next time just count to ten, because it was just a funny little aside and not worth humorlessly "disproving." And please don't reply back with a link to a Wikipedia article about Jesus

[What A Disgrace]

I'm seeing this movie for the Corn Flakes, myself.

[Mr Sausage]

There is a corn flakes box that appears for 5 seconds that convincingly evokes the 20s.

Cornflakes were created in 1894. Wikipedia even has an advertisement for the cereal from the 1910s. A large production like this helmed by a veteran filmmaker and no doubt an equally veteran crew is not going to miss something so glaringly obvious as an anachronistic cereal.

Jesus. Has the board really come to this? Next time just count to ten, because it was just a funny little aside and not worth humorlessly "disproving." And please don't reply back with a link to a Wikipedia article about Jesus

You are the one who needs to explain your humourlessness here, not I (as far as I can see the tone of my post was neutral). Not to mention explain what exactly is the worth of this condescending little display of yours.

[flyonthewall2983]

Clint discusses the film at the New York Film Festival.

[Gator]

This is a translation from last May's Le Monde interview with Eastwood on the eve of Changeling's premiere at Cannes. Most of the interview concentrates on the film with some major spoilers which I've 'whited out.' Some fascinating comments by Eastwood on his career & longevity. I can't claim it's 100% accurate translation but the gist is certainly there (unfortunately the original interview has vanished into Le Monde's paid for archive hence no direct link).

We are at the beginning of May 2008 and the film, shooting of which was completed in November 2007, is not finished yet. Eastwood is completing the mixing. From a folder he produces a photograph of Christine Collins, played onscreen by Angelina Jolie. "This woman haunts me," he says. "She seems rather old at first sight to have a 9 year old child. She is not beautiful, but has an interesting face, an uncommon depth."

From this face Clint Eastwood draws one of his most ambitious films in which a banal abduction story is transformed first by a superb portrait of a free woman whose desire for independence is seen as a threat by men, then becomes one of the most convincing recreations of 1920's Los Angeles. The fate of a child holds the key to understanding a city and a time. Los Angeles is more than a city where individuals live & work, but a malignant place, heir to the haunted forests of fairy tales where people disappear amidst general indifference.

In the film Christine Collins pursues the LA police force in front of the courts after the removal of her son, Walter. Another boy who resembled him, an absconder, had been returned as her missing son (Changeling means a substituted child). Christine Collins recognizes that fact but, on the orders of a police officer, is committed to an insane asylum to conceal the truth. He looks at the portrait of Collins one last time before closing the folder. "I do not believe there has ever been a golden age in Los Angeles," says Eastwood. "In any case, not for this woman."

Q: The removal of Walter Collins made great noise in Los Angeles in 1928. What explains its complete absence from the collective memory?

Eastwood: I read the script in the plane bringing me home after a trip to Europe. I liked it very much. The script is complex, because it was split in two distinct parts. The first part with the imprisonment of Christine Collins in an insane asylum, the second with the implication of the Los Angeles police force, and the corruption of a whole city, while revealing one of the most terrible businesses of murder in the history of the United States. Because that's part of the drama of this business.
Walter Collins was, among a score of others, one of the kids murdered by Gordon Northcott, a farmer from Riverside county. This criminal case was abundantly covered by the local press. A similar case would make the newspapers and televisions at the national level today, but at that time it was different. I believe that people quite simply wanted to erase this business from their memory. Then there was the crisis of 1929. The population had other problems that needed sorting.

Q: Had a book been written about this business?

Eastwood: Nothing. J. Michael Straczynski, the script writer, found it by chance, thanks to a friend who works at the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper was getting rid of its paper files & his friend immediately recognized the strangeness of the Christine Collins story. Straczynski became haunted by the business.

Q: Do the places still exist?

Eastwood: We went to the farm at Riverside where the murders occurred. It takes two hours in the car from Los Angeles plus the return. It took a good day. The distance was real, that also explains why this fact is not registered in the collective memory. The house hadn't changed, one would have believed that we had gone back in time. It was empty, the windows masked by Venetian blinds. We walked around the property.
The hen houses were there where the bodies of all those children had been buried. We knocked on the door, nobody answered. I was disappointed but at the same time, I couldn't see myself announcing to the new owner that 80 years ago all these children had been brutally murdered at his place.

I briefly lived in Los Angeles in 1930, in Santa Monica. My father had found a job in a service station. My sister was born over there. I still have precise memories. The city was smaller, without the least skyscraper. The town hall was one of the highest buildings. It is today one of oldest & we shot there. The downtown area was one of the most frequented, & we took care to show this in the film. Hollywood and North Hollywood were located very far away in the countryside. There were no motorways which connected the downtown area to Pasadena. There was the tram with its red coaches, which runs Angelina Jolie back & forth in the film as she searches for her son. These electric trams traversed the length of the town, & linked Pasadena with Santa Monica.

Q: Changeling looks like a complement to Mystic River (2003). The film shows how an isolated incident, a violated child, contaminated a community for twenty-five years. Here, a missing child is at the centre of the corruption of a city.

Eastwood: Absolutely! The behavior of the police force shows you how a woman was considered; she's an unmarried mother, & nobody takes her seriously. That suggested to me films like Obsession (1944), directed by George Cukor with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. The latter wonders permanently if she is not insane. Christine Collins was treated thus. I looked at the photographs of her in the company of her false child. She smiles and yet, it is obvious, this child supposedly found by the police force, is not hers. It resembles him only vaguely & his size is wrong.

I read again the depositions of the doctor of the psychiatric asylum where Christine Collins was locked up. I even used certain sentences in the film. This speech on the way in which one considered a woman then, inevitably hysterical, unable of reliable judgement. Christine is in the company of the men who judged with contempt the credibility of this womans claims. The police officer who follows the business and decides to send Christine Collins to the asylum says to her: " Something is wrong with you. You are an independent woman." The time could not accept similar women. This history would never have occurred with a couple.

Q: You were always inspired by the characters of independent women, which explains why you are one of the only directors who can use them as they were in the 1940's with Joan Crawford & Bette Davis.

Eastwood: Angelina Jolie is one of the rare American actresses today who would have made a career in the 1940's. Her face, like her personality, is very distinct, always attractive. It does not resemble anybody else. I also believe that her talent is underestimated; as an actress she is a superb girl. Angelina Jolie registers more in the tradition of Simone Signoret, in which the obvious glamour never erases the very strong personality.

Q: You have systematically chosen actresses who are not Barbie doll types: Jessica Walter in Play Misty (1971), Kay Lenz in Breezy (1973), more recently Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Eastwood: It's a question of realism. How credible can the character be if the actress resembles a Barbie doll? For my first film, Play Misty, the studio wanted actresses more in that mode than Jessica Walter for the role of the woman who becomes obsessed by her lover. I liked [Jessica Walter] because she was exactly the type of girl that I imagined being able to accost in a bar. Let us take an extreme case, Lana Turner only in a bar. How to believe a similar thing? Lana Turner, only, in a bar: instantly you are in a Hollywood film. There's no naturalness any more. An actress can release a certain beauty in one of my films, but that's a different thing. Her appeal is due to the characters history, and if it attracts you by her personality.

The interpretation of Angelina Jolie is particularly impressive. She is permanently on the brink of collapse. She knows to be tragic yet avoid the excesses of melodrama.

Q: At the end of Changeling, Christine Collins does not give up the search for her child but simply disappears. This is one of the characteristics of several of your characters - Josey Wales in The Outlaw Josey wales (1976), William Munny in Unforgiven (1992), Frankie in Million Dollar Baby.

Eastwood: I asked for the panes of the bar to be obscured at the end of Million Dollar Baby so one cannot see who was at the counter. Is this Frankie or someone else? This ambiguity I like. I like this unfinished destiny. The script writer of Changelingdid a good job in this respect. There were so many ways of telling this history, but the good idea was to stress that Walter Collins only disappeared. One never found his body, he arrived at the farm but may have escaped & afterward one knows nothing. The last word pronounced by his mother: "hope". One too often seeks to tie down history, I prefer to leave it open.

[color] Q: The sequence of the hanging of the serial killer is very detailed.

Eastwood: If you are in favour of capital punishment, Gordon Northcott constitutes an ideal candidate. In a perfect world, capital punishment could seem the adequate answer to a similar murderer. At least I would like to believe that. Whether you are for or against capital punishment, you must recognize there is something of the barbarian in making the executions public. I seized the reasoning behind such an initiative. You carry out the culprit in front of the family of the victims. Justice is thus made and these people will find a certain interior peace. Yet what peace? After this spectacle, what peace do you hope to find? It is for that I made a point of filming this scene with the greatest realism, the noise of the neck which breaks at the time when the body is balanced in space, the feet shaking at the time of greatest anguish, then the doctor runs to the condemned to note his death. I know it is unbearable to look at, and that was the required effect.

Q: You are the only example of a director making his best films after 65 years of age. How do you explain this longevity?

Eastwood: I know more about this trade than twenty years ago, & I always thought that I had things to learn. As long as that's the case, I do not see any reason to stop. Certain directors of the 1940's, Raoul Walsh, Alfred Hitchcock & Howard Hawks turned at the end of their career to remakes of their greatest successes. This is not for me. I prefer to face a new wave instead of surfing on the same one. That was the lesson of Bird & Honkytonk Man. When you disappear prematurely, you cheat your public. Charlie Parker would perhaps never have done anything again. Or on the contrary, he might have explored other facets of his talent. One will never know and that troubles me. In Honkytonk Man, the character of Red Stovall is inspired by two singers of country, Red Foley and Hank Williams, he related to their self-destruction. I will not compare myself with such artists but I could have stopped. I thought of it twice. After Unforgiven (1992). Then afterwards with Bridges of Madison County. I thought that was perhaps the moment to cultivate my garden and to go drink a good glass of wine. But if I had done that I would have passed on much challenging work. For example, I would never have made Flags of Our Fathers (2006) or made a companion film in Japanese (Letters from Iwo Jima, 2006).

Q: You did not seek to be fashionable.

Eastwood: Especially not! I am wary of the air of the time. I have worked for fifty years in an industry which follows fashion. I hate to be a follower. When I arrived at Hollywood, there was no guarantee I had any future. The films which marked a turning in my career were different than the last fashion, to start with. Nobody believed any more in the traditional western. When I think of Million Dollar Baby and the difficulty I had to assemble it! In Hollywood, everyone knows - thinks they know - which films the public will like. When I proposed the story to Warner who produced almost all my films, they answered: " A film about boxing with a girl in a boxing ring,is a very bad idéa." "This is not a film about boxing, I answered, it is a love story. A father has never known his daughter, a girl has never known her father, and two individuals fill this lack thus. It is just that this drama occurs against a background of boxing." I took the script to Universal. They liked it, but they were producing their own boxing film. I started again with my speech: " Dear Sir, this is not a film about boxing." Everywhere the same response. Warner returned, on the condition that the film was cheap. The irony is that they offered the same contract as for my first film, Play Misty: no wages, and a percentage on the receipts. That made me smile, I said to my agent: " We're right back where we were 30 years ago." I particularly liked my counterpart in White Hunter, black heart. The director, inspired by John Huston, who says to his script writer: "When you make a film, don't allow yourself to be swayed by the people who will see it. Make your film and remains faithful to yourself."

Q: After Changeling?

Eastwood: A small film in July, Gran Torino, about a veteran of the Korean war, set in Michigan, who has not adapted to the modern world. It was originally set in Poland about Polish immigrants but it ended up changing, after certain meetings. I will play the main role. At the beginning of 2009 I go on to a biography of Nelson Mandela about the years separating his coming out of prison with his election as head of South Africa. What I'm interested in is how an individual maintains the cohesion of his country while supporting those people who once placed him in captivity.

[tavernier]

Profile of Angelina.

[Barmy]

Ms. Jolie, who says she doesn’t particularly like to watch her own work

That makes 2 of us.

she expects acting to play a diminishing role in her life as time goes by

=D>