It's in the Title, Duh!

This is a response to Hari Azizan’s review of the film Changeling, directed by Clint Eastwood, in The Star newspaper today Saturday February 7^th 2009.

It seems that poor Hari was somewhat disappointed by the film, in which Angelina Jolie plays the role of a single mother whose son goes missing.

Maybe Hari expected another Lara Croft character, or Fox from the film Wanted, and found it difficult to realise that Ms Jolie can act as well as leap and point guns, ho hum.

Hari is not convinced by Angelina’s portrayal of devastation and despair over the loss of her son. She alludes to conceited scenes, but never expresses what they are, and accuses the film of needing glamour brought by the addition of Angelina Jolie to head the cast.

On what are these assumptions based, did we see the same film?

Hari seems to think that the film was solely about the Wineville Chicken Coop murders, oh dear, did she miss the beginning of the film entirely - didn’t she read the title? Oh well put it down to cultural misunderstandings then.

The film opens revealing widespread corruption in a police department gone bad (1920s, Los Angeles Police Department). A mother and her son live together, the child’s father having skipped off because he couldn’t handle the responsibility.

The two themes clash head on when the mother (Angelina Jolie) returns home late from work to find her son missing. The police department is unconcerned. During the next few months the mother battles to have the police department acknowledge that her son is alive and missing.

Eventually the police department haul in a boy and produce him as her son. He isn’t - hence the title of the film – Changeling.

The film title is taken from common Western folklore where a ‘fairy’ baby is exchanged for a human baby soon after birth. In some tales ‘changeling’ fairy children bleed the mothers of their life force, whereas the human child may be used as a slave for fairies or as new stock for the fairy line to prevent inbreeding.

Had the film been called The Wineville Chicken Coop murders, Hari may have a point, but sadly for her it wasn’t. Therefore all of Hari’s protestations that “The killings and the police corruption scandal are by far a more gripping and powerful aspect of the whole story” are mute because the focus is on the mother and the child, his disappearance and substitute by the authorities. It’s in the very title of the film itself Hari.

Jolie, as the mother, protests that the new child isn’t hers, but is ignored and eventually thrown into Los Angeles County Hospital’s ‘psychopathic ward’, both to silence her as an embarrassment to the police department and because she is obviously insane as she doesn’t recognised her own son. The film deals with the mother’s disempowerment and abuse by those in authority, from police to psychiatrists and staff at the hospital.

The Wineville Chicken Coop murders is an add-on to this mother’s story, in an attempt to try to explain what may have happened to the mother’s son. By the end of the film there has been an emotional rollercoaster, as the audience is held in suspension over what may have occurred to this woman’s only child, and the blatant abuse of authority.

Obviously Hari and I disagree. She believes that the central character was not compelling, whereas I believe that Angelina Jolie suited the character well as a middle-class working manager, a mother, and a woman who authority tries to manipulate and abuse.