Angels and Demons

Film: Changeling
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Angelina Jolie,Jeffrey Donovan,John Malkovich,Jason Butler Harner,Colm Feore,Michael Kelly,Amy Ryan
Rating: ******
Running at: Inox (Forum,City Centre,Swabhumi)
Throughout Changeling,except for a handful of frames,Angelina Jolie wears a cruel red lipstick that somehow refuses to yield to all the clichés that a smarting mother has collected in her long long tryst with cinema. And this is just one instance of the numerous where Clint Eastwood steps over the predictable,and slaps earth on the skeleton of a character that a ‘real incident’ could have possibly offered him. However,somewhere down the engagingly sombre film,he forgets to step across the line that separates the real from the brutal —a line that probably keeps a good film at an arm’s length from the brilliant.

Eastwood’s Los Angeles in 1928 is shorn of Hollywood,outrageous go-go bars and gorgeous gang lords. Instead it resides in quiet sidewalks,in the chatter of non glamourous telephone operators,and in the invisible violence that seethes under the skins of friendly police officers. Christine Collins (Angelina Joile) is a single mother in that LA,whose nine-year-old son Walter goes missing. After a tortured five-month wait,the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) hands over a child to her insisting that he is Walter. Collins,however,refuses to accept the impostor as her son and pesters the police department to resume their hunt for her own son. The LAPD on the other hand is desperate to turn around their reputation as a force of reckless,power hungry and inefficient louts,undeserving of the office they hold —so they decide on an extreme cover-up plan. In the mean time,another official accidentally bumps into an incident of mass murders,where Walter could have been a victim.

Eastwood holds together his narrative impressively up to one point,letting very little sloth creep into it. As Collins hurtles from one obstacle to other,helpless and outraged at the same time,her courage is shuttled between desperation and determination almost continually. The graph of her character doesn’t consistently climb up an arch that makes martyrs out of men —instead its jagged curve confirms she is more a person,than a noble,fearless,fit-to-be-beatified protagonist. Collins cowers before policemen,stutters before the media,trembles in horror as the possible killer of her son fights against the tightening noose around his neck— a mark of triumphant justice. She moves on,without letting go. She is far from stoic — but it makes her no less stunning.

Jolie doesn’t shudder and howl dramatically like screen moms,is not carried around in the arms of friendly acquaintances. Beneath her protective hat and defiant red lipstick she quivers and squirms with such subtlety that she makes grief look beautiful.

However,one wishes Eastwood hadn’t travelled the routine cinematic paths in the fight for justice — the scheming police and the mental hospital could have been given a break. We are dealing with a ‘real incident’ here —but Eastwood sure could have handled the bits a little more imaginatively.