Horror and the Human Will.

Changeling is the most horrifying movie I've seen that doesn't fall under the horror genre. The movie illustrates how miserable life becomes when people in powerful positions collude to maintain that power. In this film the police, the office of the mayor, and the head of the state psychiatric ward all work towards convincing the refreshingly de-glamorized Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins that her missing son has been returned to her. When she points out that the boy is not her son, they use all their collective social powers to silence her. It being the 1920s, this is not a hard task to accomplish. As I was watching the film I remember thinking that it's funny how bureaucracy is often at its most efficient when it is used for evil purposes; there's nothing quite like the knowledge that you're destroying and oppressing the lives of thousands to work the doldrums out of all that paper pushing.

The film is beautiful in that aesthetic way that pre-depression United States period pieces always seem to effortless achieve. I felt some of the scenes were trying a little too hard to emphasize this, particularly at the end of the film where a hat is tipped and a crane shot climbs up to the rooftops showing the bustle of the city road. These little period tropes were distracting particularly when they were meant as winks to the audience. Although an invisible style would have been a mistake, the fact that this is a true story required the exercise of a little more restraint than the film delivers. Small slips aside, the film nevertheless seems yet another fine chapter in the history of Eastwood's masterful direction.

After the film's conclusion, Joanna pointed out to me that she'd read a review where the critic complained the film "rewarded the audience for being right." Indeed, there is no moral ambiguity in the film. Victims and villains are defined in such a way that has prompted some vibrantly negative soundbytes. Here are just a few:

"The result is a film that plays like a creaking melodrama, with good guys and bad guys and precious little in between." --Chris Kaltenbach "Baltimore Sun"

"Eastwood and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski play things right down the middle, letting the story unfold in such an obvious, straightforward manner that you think they must have a curve ball up their sleeves. Sadly, they don't." --Adam Graham "Detroit News"

"The nice people? Gosh, they're swell. The bad people? Splash water on them and they'll melt. Changeling is a true story full of cartoons. There is not a single character in this movie that couldn't be made into an origami swan." --Steve Burgess "The Tyee"

This seems like a critique of the real life events more than it is a critique of the film though. Insofar as I can tell, the true events are largely manipulated in terms of their chronology to ratchet up tension, but not necessarily to amplify moral outrage. It must be understood that a victim, being removed of all his or her power, becomes perfectly moral because they have been robbed of agency. I think this is what critics are responding to, and in so doing are mistaking characters for cartoons. Representations of pure evil and complete victimization seem to be out of style, unless you are making a holocaust film. In the same way that we are allowed to experience despair and the extent of human cruelty in those holocaust films, I don't see why we can't have a similarly emotive experience in watching Changeling. This film is mimetic, not didactic. If anything is being taught, it's history through an artistic lens, not how to behave morally or recognize good or evil.

Million Dollar Baby was another Eastwood film that had this same arc, but had the benefit of "asking" the audience if euthanasia is permissible. I put "asking" in quotes because I don't believe the film intended to ask that question, so much as make a statement that it was, which then brought about a discussion of the ethics behind that message. Subtract that issue from Million Dollar Baby, and what's left is a straightforward inspirational story about the power and potential of the human will. I suppose what I liked about Changeling was the mapping of the human will through bonds between persons and in community. There's the mayor pressuring the Chief to improve the image of the police, who pressures the Captain into making this missing child case go away, and the Captain then puts the wheels in motion to the entire phony reunion. The police put pressure on administration at the Psychiatric Ward to inter without due process all the women that cause them trouble. Even the psychopathic murderer in the film forces his cousin, a young boy, to assist him in kidnapping and brutally murdering children. And Ms. Collins has the Reverend acting as her voice, and the Reverend convinced a famous lawyer to serve as her attorney and advocate for institutional change. On one level I see it as a story about political change, concerning the rights of women and the eradication of political corruption. The latter of which (and probably even the former), I suppose is apropos to our current political climate of change, as evidenced by the success of the Obama campaign. But the idea that politics exists on both abstract and personal levels isn't really something you can explain except through examples or hypothetical situations, and Changeling fills that order.

If a criticism of this movie can be made, it may involve the element of horror I mentioned earlier in the review. This movie is rife with the terror of inevitable torture and death. During a scene where the murderer, Gordon Northcott, has grabbed a boy out of the chicken coup he is using as a prison, the children hook their tiny fingers on the chicken wire, scream, cry, and look with horror as one of them is dismembered with an axe. Then there's the horrors that await the women of the Psychiatric Ward. The violence on the screen isn't nearly as impacting as those moments where you know something horrible is about to happen, and no one will stop it, yet countless people are observing it. This theme gets a little labored and at one point gave me flashbacks of Mel Gibson's Passion. However, this kind of scene if turned on its back during a public execution, the condemned man begs for his life, and howls incoherently as he is dragged up the steps of the platform where he will be hung until dead. Plenty of people watch as he is killed as well, and are similarly unmoved by his pleas. Perhaps this scene will serve as the counterpart for the Million Dollar Baby pet issue, asking if capital punishment is morally permissible? Though I don't feel this film asks that question, either.