?Changeling?
D: Clint Eastwood
S: Angelina Jolie
MANILA, Philippines?As an actress, Angelina Jolie has won awards for playing tormented, true-to-life characters and disturbed women, from ?George Wallace? and ?Gia? to ?Playing by Heart? and ?Girl, Interrupted.?
Lately, Jolie has been shuttling between crowd-pleasing commercial projects (?Wanted,? ?Kung Fu Panda,? ?Mr. and Mrs. Smith?) and arthouse favorites like Michael Winterbottom?s searing 2007 drama, ?A Mighty Heart,? in which she played Mariane Pearl, the wife of slain Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl.
Fruitless search
In Clint Eastwood?s period drama, ?The Changeling,? the actress? restrained but well-limned performance is a sight to behold: She plays Christine Collins, a single mother in 1920s Los Angeles, whose anguish over the mysterious disappearance of her 9-year-old son, Walter, drove her to confront a corrupt, arrogant and incompetent police force. After months of fruitless search, the LAPD announced that Collins? son had finally been found in Illinois, some 2,700 kilometers from California!
That momentous crime-solving ?triumph? of the embattled police department had not-so-minor glitches, however: Neither Christine nor Walter?s teachers and classmates knew who the new boy was?he was three inches shorter than Walter! Moreover, Walter?s dental records proved beyond doubt that the kid in question wasn?t who he said he was.
To add insult to injury, Christine was hauled off by the police to a psychiatric ward after she refused to recognize the boy as her son. Elsewhere, in a deserted ranch, a detective had accidentally stumbled upon a mass grave that concealed dismembered body parts of 20 young boys. The culprit: Gordon Northcott (the chillingly sinister Jason Butler Harner), a remorseless pedophile and serial killer in the mold of Jeffrey Dahmer!
Eastwood has been our favorite director since we ?discovered? him in 1990?s ?White Hunter, Black Heart??some 19 years after he helmed his directorial debut, ?Play Misty for Me? (1971), at age 41. He doesn?t possess the cerebral aesthetic of Stanley Kubrick, the in-your-face storytelling conviction of Martin Scorsese, or the eye-popping cinematic flair of Steven Spielberg, but Eastwood?s straightforward, rough-around-the-edges style (?Unforgiven,? ?Mystic River,? ?Million Dollar Baby,? ?Flags of Our Fathers?) never fails to engage viewers? attention.
The prolific 78-year-old director ages with graceful lucidity?and he never runs out of intelligent insights moviegoers can ponder on! (Interestingly, his other Oscar entry, ?Gran Torino,? is an even better film.) He?s not afraid to forego interesting side-plots to avoid cluttering his narrative. For instance, the story of Northcott?a product of the incestuous relationship of his father and sister-mother?is itself ?cinematic,? but the production only mentions in passing the background of the serial killer behind the infamous Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.
Taking her cue from the prolific director, Jolie sidesteps the crowd-pleasing acting crutches she?s famous for: The pouty smile, the invincible, know-it-all countenance, etc. The actress avoids emotional blackmail by relying on instinct and intelligence to breathe life into Collins? motherly anguish and anger over the authority?s insensitivity, arrogance and inability to help. Restraint is key to Angelina?s latest acting triumph.
