CHANGELING (R) ****

 

Directed by Clint Eastwood. 140 minutes.

Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Amy Ryan, Colm Feore, Jeffrey Donovan, Jason Butler Harner and Michael Kelly. Released by Universal Pictures.

 

Clint Eastwood’s latest film is a hodgepodge of a Los Angeles crime saga to the tune of L.A. Confidential, a serial killer movie, a mental institution film in the vein of The Snake Pit and, what they would call in the days of old, a women’s picture. And, because he is Clint Eastwood, the director pretty much pulls it off in all categories. It’s only in the end of the film that various plotlines begin to feel like multiple endings, but no matter. Eastwood has beautifully recreated 1920s L.A., from the streetcars and Angelina Jolie’s fashionable coat and cloche to the original Universal Pictures logo at the film’s opening. Changeling is also, quite possibly, the director’s angriest film to date. In tackling corruption at the highest levels, Eastwood has drawn parallels to our own burning Rome, portraying a cynical system without empathy that rewards the powerful and crushes the weak.

 

The film opens with Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie, who goes from laid back to ferocious throughout the picture’s proceedings) taking her son, Walter, to school before heading to her job with the phone company. She’s a manager who oversees the operators, skating back and forth on roller-skates and taking care of customer complaints. One day, she comes home from work to find her son missing. She calls the cops, but they tell her to wait 24 hours. Several months later, a young boy is presented to Christine, but she knows he is not her son. The film is apparently based on a true story and involves some serial killings in Winesville, California of which I had actually heard. Another director might take the myriad of storylines in Changeling – the police’s investigation of the missing child, sequences in a mental institution, the friendship struck between Collins and a local pastor (John Malkovich), corrupt cops, a serial killer and his young victims, two court cases, etc. – and create an ungainly jumble, but Eastwood’s direction is fluid, making the picture’s threads weave in and out harmoniously.

 

There’s a lot to chew on here and a lot of solid work by those involved. Jolie’s performance intensifies as the film rolls on, most notably when she confronts the film’s serial killer before the picture’s coda. This is among her best performances. Amy Ryan, who was so good in Gone Baby Gone, has a solid supporting performance here, while Michael Kelly convinces as a decent cop who is investigating the child murders which link the film’s various stories. Jeffrey Donovan is effectively horrid as the crooked captain of the LAPD and Jason Butler Harner ably wears the mask of evil as serial killer Gordon Northcott. Yes, and John Malkovich is, well, John Malkovich.

 

Changeling belongs in that category of great films – A.I., perhaps - that shoot for the moon and mostly hit the target. I could name other films in that category, but you know what I mean. In my review of Gangs of New York, I called it a “reckless masterpiece.” It’s a fitting title both for that film and this one. Towards the end of Eastwood’s film, sequences that appear to be closing scenes begin to stack up: two court cases, a visit to a high security prison, an execution and a discovery. All of the scenes work just fine – though I could have probably done without a rendition of “Silent Night” – but they are stacked on top of one another to the point that it feels the film has multiple endings.

 

But Eastwood’s filmmaking here is bold. The scenes in which Christine suffers through the humiliations of being held in a mental institution could have come across as camp- in fact, a scene in which a roommate continues to yell “My room!” as the camera pans out of a window and across the institution’s building comes close to just that – but the director gives the sequences a life of their own outside the clichés of institutional drama. The depiction of the serial killings in the film are powerful, frightening and deeply disturbing, but Eastwood is a smart enough filmmaker to know when to pull back and not upset the film’s tone. And, I would tend to worry if a film’s climax entails two back to back courtroom scenes, but they inspire earned emotion, rather than speechmaking in this case. It’s been a hell of a decade for the director who, at age 78, has delivered two films this year (Gran Torino is released in December). I still believe Mystic River is the best film of the director’s renaissance, but Changeling may be his most ambitious. It’s a testament to Eastwood’s staying power and well-earned reputation as one of our finest living filmmakers.