You would think getting a chance to watch the Oscar-nominated performance from Angelina Jolie in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling would be a welcome proposal, but at two hours and 20 minutes this film is a tough one to relive, but I will admit Universal’s Blu-ray U Control feature made it a bit easier to handle the second time around. Of course that doesn’t sell you on buying it since the number one reason we buy a movie is for the movie and hopefully we don’t need the special features just to watch it.
My biggest problem with Changeling is that there is no surprise, no shock and no twists around the corner to catch the audience off guard. As I was watching in the theater I kept waiting for the reason the movie was made to become evident to me. If this was a film to prove the Los Angeles police in the twenties were corrupt and ignorant they sure went the roundabout way of telling the story. Or if it was a story showing to what extent Christine Collins (Jolie) would go to to try and get her son back, that’s fine, but it didn’t need to take this long to be told. While watching this film the audience is introduced to kidnappings, murder, police corruption and any other imaginable act of human depravity you can imagine, but it seems all for naught once it’s over. Even Eastwood’s careful hand at crafting the story seemed all wrong to me as the cinematography and score seem so gentle and beautiful to be telling such a dark story. Such beauty implies redemption and there really is none to be found and redemption is what the audience deserves, at least a little bit, once this film is over.
After watching it again, and on Blu-ray, the cinematography is striking. Eastwood works with a muted palette and brief splashes of color, particularly the bright red lipstick worn by Jolie throughout. He was working with longtime collaborator Tom Stern as his DP, who was also nominated for an Oscar for his work in this film. The score, which I also mentioned already, which I don’t particularly think fits all that well with the story but is quite good nonetheless; even if I can’t help but think of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” every time that piano begins to play.
Jolie is great in the lead role, but her constant screaming for “her son” grows increasingly annoying as the film plays out, but she does save it from becoming an all out bore and for that reason perhaps an Oscar nomination was worthy. The best performance in the film, though, belongs to 14-year-old Eddie Alderson who breaks down in an interrogation scene opposite Michael Kelly that serves as the film’s climactic moment — at least for me.
In the additional features department you have two independent featurettes and then the U-Control goodies. Beginning with the independents you have a feature that takes a look at Jolie and Christine Collins, the character she is playing, and it’s just as generic as it sounds and then the first half of the second feature, called “Partners in Crime”, is quite good as it has interviews with the cast and crew talking about working with Eastwood. Sure, it’s a bunch of glad-handing, but it all seems legit and was a fun watch before it turned generic about mid-way through, which I think started with Jolie saying she doesn’t want to make another movie unless Eastwood is directing. Yeah, that kind of glad-handing is a bit too much.
The Blu-ray exclusive in-movie U Control features are sort of the main feature with the independent featurettes acting as a teaser trailer as the picture-in-picture reiterates some of what was said already, but adds plenty more in a sporadic amount of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. Also included is a “Los Angeles: Then and Now” feature which pops up and shows comparisons to how things used to look in L.A. compared to how they are now. Things such as how the house Christine Collins used to live in is now a freeway. There’s an eye-opener. The third feature is an Archive feature which shows archival pictures and documents from the real story. Most of this is pretty standard stuff, but once you get a look at the snaps of the Northcott farm and then a look at the real Gordon Nothcott himself it makes the man portrayed by Jason Butler Harner look like someone you would invite home for Thanksgiving. It was a mish-mash of all these features that made my second viewing possible or I don’t think I would have been able to do it; the movie isn’t interesting enough on its own.
Overall, this is a rental and I would assume it’s only worth renting even for those that really do enjoy it, because the story itself is unfortunate enough that I don’t think it lends itself well to repeat viewings. When it comes to tragic stories such as this the lack of redemption becomes a flaw, especially with this film as I can’t quite figure out why this story was worth telling.
