Like Doubt, which we spotlighted here on Wednesday, Changeling is an obvious piece of Oscar-bait- period piece, true story, starring one of Hollywood’s most visible leading ladies, and directed by four-time Academy Award-winner Clint Eastwood. But what surprised me here was how unsentimental this looks. Angelina Jolie’s Christine Collins comes off less as a defiant crusader than a vulnerable victim of a corrupt system, and Jolie’s performance doesn’t come off as steely heroism but rather a loving mother who’s scared shitless by what she’s up against. Consequently, I think this will help her to successfully disappear into the role, since this element of fear will make it easier for audience members to distinguish her from the activist/babe/super-mom Jolie of the supermarket tabloids. I also think it helps that John Malkovich is playing the anti-corruption pastor here, which should give the character a much less self-righteous form of advocacy than one usually finds in films of this sort. Changeling received almost uniformly positive reviews at Cannes this year, and based on the trailer, this acclaim for Eastwood (one of Hollywood’s most consistently solid filmmakers) appears to be well-founded.
