Changeling Movie Essay
Changeling is a movie from 2008. Directed by Clint Eastwood, and based on a true story, this film is about a woman who takes up a tiff with the Los Angeles Police Department for giving her a child that didn’t belong to her. This twisted drama dates back to the late 1920’s to the early/mid 1930’s. The main characters in the film were: Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), Walter Collins (Gattlin Griffith), Captain. J.J. Jones (Jeffery Donovan), Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), Sanford Clark (Eddie Alderson), Gordon Northcott (Jason Butler Harner), Carol Dexter and Detective Lester Ybarra (Michael Kelley). (IMDb) One Saturday morning a mother said goodbye to her son on her way to work. Being a telephone operator a young Christine
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Collins worked long, tiring hours. She returned home to find her only child missing from home. This was out of Walter’s character so his mother began to worry. She checked his room, his friends’ houses, and still there was no sign of young Walter Collins. Mrs. Collins filed a missing children’s report with the LAPD. Walter had been missing for days. Those days turned to weeks, and those weeks to months. When finally Christine received a call from the police department saying they had found her son. There was only one problem. The boy said to be Walter Collins had gone through a few changes. These discrepancies were brought up to police captain. He had gotten shorter, he didn’t know his teachers, and he was circumcised. Now, any mother knows her child and this wasn’t Walter. Mrs. Collins was thrown in a mental ward under code 12 (Police reasoning). While in the L.A. County Hospital She befriends Carol Dexter. Carol tells her they were both in similar to other women for quetiong the authority of the police force. After hearing Christine’s Story, A popular rev. by the name of Gustav Briegleb he wanted to help her. He was always against the corruption of the legal system and police dept. of Los. Angeles. This is where the “Battle” truly begins. “Great directors have an ability to make any material their own and take risks where others would demur.
That is not to say that the subject of 78-year-old Clint Eastwood’s latest – the moving and true story of a traumatised lone mother (Angelina Jolie) who, in late 1920s Los Angeles, insists that the son returned to her by police following his kidnap is not hers – doesn’t involve themes and elements close to the director’s heart. It very much does: not least those of struggle against repressive systems, intolerable situations or impossible odds, a re-appraisal of the depiction of women and others seen as ‘second-class’ and an unflinching approach to the complexity, ironies, rituals and political implications of crime and violence, punishment and revenge.But having said that, ‘Changeling’ is, for an essentially populist work, unexpectedly audacious, advancing way beyond the call of duty in all its basic four elements. Firstly, as a period-reconstruction costumer, it is meticulous to the point of affectionate in its realisation of the lost world of 1928 LA, while never allowing such ‘colour’ to obscure or upstage the human drama. As a police investigative procedural, too, it mounts a sober, credible, yet searing critique of the famously corrupt political and law enforcement establishment of the day, led by Chief Davis (Colm Feore). And, as a variation on the campaigning/woman-in-jeopardy movie, it illicits Jolie’s finest performance to date, as the woman, Christine
Collins, who faces her worst nightmare – the kidnap of her 9-year-old son, while a child killer is known to be at work. Jolie’s task is to show each calibration of her maddening dilemma (at one point she is incarcerated in a mental institution), caught as she is between suspended grief, fear, isolation, anger and – most movingly – her maternal feelings towards the imposter (Devon Conti) in her care. But, lastly, it is the restrained clarity of Eastwood’s exposition throughout this roller-coaster ride that is most impressive. He shows the horrors in the same way he observes Christine’s courage, all the while careful only to allow his sympathies to register by means of the tense and empathetic emotional line he keeps at every stage of his heroine’s hellish experiences. It’s a tough movie but also rewarding and inspiring: something of a quiet triumph.” Says a Film Critic named, Wally Hammond to the Time Out of London. (Hammond) the aspect of the film I wanted to critique was a woman’s battle with self wiil and determination. The film’s portrayl of the struggle of a mother finding her son with the legal system against her was a big deal to me. I researched the actual case to see if it added up and it did. My overall thought of the film would be that it’s a “must see”. The character portrayal and twisted touching cncepept, was an absolute winner. I would recommend it to anyone at anytime. It’s an amazing true to life stu=ruggle and I think with everthing going on, people could connect to it. Not only will they love it the first time, but everytime they watch it they will fall in love with it all over again.
Works Cited
Hammond, Wally. "Time Out London." 25 november 2008.
"IMDb." 2008. IMDb Inc. .
Collins worked long, tiring hours. She returned home to find her only child missing from home. This was out of Walter’s character so his mother began to worry. She checked his room, his friends’ houses, and still there was no sign of young Walter Collins. Mrs. Collins filed a missing children’s report with the LAPD. Walter had been missing for days. Those days turned to weeks, and those weeks to months. When finally Christine received a call from the police department saying they had found her son. There was only one problem. The boy said to be Walter Collins had gone through a few changes. These discrepancies were brought up to police captain. He had gotten shorter, he didn’t know his teachers, and he was circumcised. Now, any mother knows her child and this wasn’t Walter. Mrs. Collins was thrown in a mental ward under code 12 (Police reasoning). While in the L.A. County Hospital She befriends Carol Dexter. Carol tells her they were both in similar to other women for quetiong the authority of the police force. After hearing Christine’s Story, A popular rev. by the name of Gustav Briegleb he wanted to help her. He was always against the corruption of the legal system and police dept. of Los. Angeles. This is where the “Battle” truly begins. “Great directors have an ability to make any material their own and take risks where others would demur.
That is not to say that the subject of 78-year-old Clint Eastwood’s latest – the moving and true story of a traumatised lone mother (Angelina Jolie) who, in late 1920s Los Angeles, insists that the son returned to her by police following his kidnap is not hers – doesn’t involve themes and elements close to the director’s heart. It very much does: not least those of struggle against repressive systems, intolerable situations or impossible odds, a re-appraisal of the depiction of women and others seen as ‘second-class’ and an unflinching approach to the complexity, ironies, rituals and political implications of crime and violence, punishment and revenge.But having said that, ‘Changeling’ is, for an essentially populist work, unexpectedly audacious, advancing way beyond the call of duty in all its basic four elements. Firstly, as a period-reconstruction costumer, it is meticulous to the point of affectionate in its realisation of the lost world of 1928 LA, while never allowing such ‘colour’ to obscure or upstage the human drama. As a police investigative procedural, too, it mounts a sober, credible, yet searing critique of the famously corrupt political and law enforcement establishment of the day, led by Chief Davis (Colm Feore). And, as a variation on the campaigning/woman-in-jeopardy movie, it illicits Jolie’s finest performance to date, as the woman, Christine
Collins, who faces her worst nightmare – the kidnap of her 9-year-old son, while a child killer is known to be at work. Jolie’s task is to show each calibration of her maddening dilemma (at one point she is incarcerated in a mental institution), caught as she is between suspended grief, fear, isolation, anger and – most movingly – her maternal feelings towards the imposter (Devon Conti) in her care. But, lastly, it is the restrained clarity of Eastwood’s exposition throughout this roller-coaster ride that is most impressive. He shows the horrors in the same way he observes Christine’s courage, all the while careful only to allow his sympathies to register by means of the tense and empathetic emotional line he keeps at every stage of his heroine’s hellish experiences. It’s a tough movie but also rewarding and inspiring: something of a quiet triumph.” Says a Film Critic named, Wally Hammond to the Time Out of London. (Hammond) the aspect of the film I wanted to critique was a woman’s battle with self wiil and determination. The film’s portrayl of the struggle of a mother finding her son with the legal system against her was a big deal to me. I researched the actual case to see if it added up and it did. My overall thought of the film would be that it’s a “must see”. The character portrayal and twisted touching cncepept, was an absolute winner. I would recommend it to anyone at anytime. It’s an amazing true to life stu=ruggle and I think with everthing going on, people could connect to it. Not only will they love it the first time, but everytime they watch it they will fall in love with it all over again.
Works Cited
Hammond, Wally. "Time Out London." 25 november 2008.
"IMDb." 2008. IMDb Inc. .