There are movies. There are films. Then, there is art.
“Zack and Mira Make a Porno” is a movie. “Appaloosa” is a film. Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” is a work of art.
“Changeling” is a quiet masterpiece by a seventy-eight year-old auteur who has a least three things in common with my favorite director, Alfred Hitchcock. Both Eastwood and Hitchcock did their best work late in life (after a lifetime of good work). Both filmmakers functioned as independents within the studio system. And both enjoy commercial and critical success.
Of course, Eastwood isn’t the only artist involved in “Changeling.” Screenwriter Michael Straczynski turns in a stellar novel-like script and Angelina Jolie is beyond brilliant in an understated and deeply affecting performance.
Set in 1928 Los Angeles, “Changeling” is the story of a single mother, Christine Collins, who returns home one day to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter, missing. Several months later, Christine is told that her son has been found alive, but when Christine sees “Walter” she doesn’t recognize him. Captain Jones pressures a confused Christine into taking the boy home “on a trial basis.”
After Christine confronts Captain Jones with physical discrepancies between the little boy claiming to be”Walter” and her son, Jones orders Christine to the Los Angeles County Hospital’s psychopathic ward, and told repeatedly that if she will just admit she was mistaken about “Walter” and say the LAPD was right, she’ll be released.
What really happened to Walter Collins is later revealed. Sort of. But this powerful story is not so much about the abduction or the investigation, but the faith and fortitude of a powerless single mother in the face of the all-powerful, male-dominated, corrupt police department. It’s a reminder of how easily power is abused, and how very much accountability and checks and balances are essential to protect citizens from their government.
Heroic people abound in this story. There’s Christine Collins, of course, but there’s also the outspoken minister, Gustav Briegleb, and Detective Ybarra (Michael Kelly) who conducts the actual investigation into what happened to Walter Collins in spite of enormous pressure by Captain Jones not to do so. And, as usual, heroes are ordinary people just being decent human beings when the entire mighty rushing river of corrupt culture is pounding them, pushing them to conform, to go along to get along, to let go and just go with the flow.
The highest compliment I can give the near-perfect, perhaps even perfect, “Changeling” is that it is a true story. And I don’t just mean that is was based on real people and actual events, but that it is true in every single sense of the word. If fiction is the lie that tells the truth, then this story is the truth that tells an even deeper truth. “Changeling” is a deeply, devastatingly, powerfully, profoundly true work of art, and it doesn’t get any truer than that.
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