Feb 10, 2009 09:42 PM
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(Updated Sep 10, 2009 11:01 AM)
Hi Friends, today I am going to review an intriguing intense drama of a relationship between a mother and her so called child which has got all the ingredients of an engrossing movie. The movie, I am talking about and reviewing here is “Changeling”which hit the theatres in late 2008.
The director of this movie is the legendary actor and director, Clint Eastwood who has enacted brilliantly in the past in many classics like where eagles dare, dirty harry, bronco billy and many more and has handled the baton as a director very well in some marvellous movies to name a few like bronco billly, million dollar baby and this one reviewed here.
In the early 1920”s Single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) returns home from work to discover that her nine-year-old son, Walter (Gattlin Griffith), is nowhere to be found. After being forced to wait 24 hours to file a police report, Christine embarks on a torturous quest over the coming weeks, dedicating her every waking moment to finding her missing son, supposedly with the help of the police. A few months later, LAPD captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) appears to deliver some astounding news, Christine’s son has been found, and he'll be arriving home shortly to be reunited with his mother. In most stories, this is where the nightmare ends; in Christine's, it's only the beginning. Immediately upon seeing her "son," she realizes that the police have made a terrible mistake.It”s not her son. Imagine that your child had disappeared. That's harrowing enough, especially if you're a single parent with little in the way of emotional support. Now imagine that, after months of investigation, you were told he had been found, and you rushed to be reunited with him, only to discover that the boy waiting at the station - the boy you were told to take home and care for - was not your son.
This is only the start of the escalating horror that the heroine of Changelinghas to endure, and there's no opportunity to close one's eyes and tell oneself it's just a film .it's all based on a true story. Writer J Michael Straczynski became obsessed by the case of Christine Collins and her son Walter after coming across court documents that were about to be destroyed. Much of the dialogue in the film's court scenes is taken from these verbatim, but it's seamlessly woven into the whole, never striking a false note. Straczynski's script is a masterpiece of understatement and restraint, and Angelina Jolie is riveting in the central role.
Clint Eastwood's films are always well made and Changeling is beautiful to look at throughout, enhancing the air of sublime suburban normality that makes the unfolding horrors all the more gut wrenching. It's also worth remembering that Eastwood was promoting strong roles for women back in the Sixties. It's still rare to see a film built around an actress like this, but Jolie is more than up to the task. She disappears into Christine, giving us somebody who is physically vulnerable, naive, and terrified half out of her wits, yet who is also brave, resourceful and utterly convincing aptly aided by the other character actors who have done their job according to aspirations of the Director.
The ending of the movie is more riveting enough to justify the nature of the movie by all means.
Much of what actually happens in Changelingis relatively familiar fare in cinemas today, but it rarely comes across with this kind of impact. Eastwood has always known how to hint at things in a way much more horrific than seeing them directly could ever be, and this perfectly complements the mood of the film. It's gruelling to sit through and you may well feel haunted by it for a long time afterwards, but this has always been an important point in Eastwood's agenda - he wants to remind us just how horrible the crimes we watch as entertainment really are.
Source:- Internet.
