Changeling

Changeling (2008)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
***

It's a tricky act to keep drama from veering into melodrama. Especially when you raise the stakes so high, they're through the roof. I'm sure Clint meant well on this one, but the overall impressions I was left with were: 1) wow, what a terrible thing to happen in real life and 2) three words: mel-o-drama.

It was off to such a great start. Production design & cinematography that really helped you feel like you were in Depression-era Los Angeles. Strategically-keyed lighting also kept Angelina Jolie's face washed out most of the time, exactly like you'd expect from a Garbo movie from this era. And to be honest, the story does have some riveting moments and genuinely stark revelations. It succeeds (sometimes) in creating an angry, frustrated reaction against the corrupt police department, against the frail role that women were often forced into, against the evil streak in humanness that makes us do terrible things.

It's the script that's to blame. A story like this is a balancing act of power and pathos, and very early on you could tell the vehicle naturally swerved to the right. Pathos you want? Pathos we got. The vast majority of Angelina's scenes find her weeping or at least distraught. Sure, her little boy's lost. We get it. We realize this is a true story. Just do us a favor, eh? Create a story out of it that holds our interest because you've written it so tightly, with such a skillful variety of moods and surprises, that we can't help ourselves. Not one that drags at several points, moves from seemingly-family-friendly drama at many points to most-people-would-never-want-to-see-that-image at others, and insists on such melodramatic scenes.

There was potential here. Angelina, perhaps, deserves a nomination for her performance as real-life Christine Collins, the persistent dynamo who brought about some amazing changes in the City of Angels. Maybe the almost-unrecognizable Amy Ryan does too, for her portrayal of an almost-hopeless prostitute who gives Christine hope. John Malkovich actually turned in a really interesting, low-key performance as a politically-active Presbyterian minister.

The sad fact is that Eastwood & his script just wasn't quite worth their investment. And to top it off, Clint made the same mistake as he did in the fairly masterful Mystic River: he wrote score that never quite seemed to fit the mood of the film, and was never able to accompany a dark scene without somehow ending on a major chord. There, it was an annoyance. Here, it was a marker of the film's failure to find balance.