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Last Updated: Nov 14th, 2008 - 11:48:51 |
Who knew?
The Los Angeles Police Department has a long history of being crooked and brutish—with White as well as Black and Brown residents of the City of Angels.
This fact is a riveting social thread, one that will not be lost on African Americans, who watch Clint Eastwood’s extraordinary new movie “Changeling.” The 140-minute film tells a story that seamlessly meshes big issues of police power, crime and punishment with the intimate story of one woman’s loss and perseverance.
“Changeling” is the true story of Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), who in 1928 came home from work to find her son Walter missing. A successful, working single mother at a time when women were not credited with business savvy, Collins is a character that foreshadows the role that working women would play in United States factories during World War II. What happens to Collins, during her effort to locate her son, is a stark reminder of how women—White women included—were in many respects treated as second-class citizens by police and courts. Of course, you can figure that if a White woman was treated this way, how in the world did the LAPD treat Black women? That question is the only shame of a film like this, that in telling this singularly American tale of one woman, it cannot, at the same time, tell a story inclusive of a diverse country.
The film achieves a remarkable immersion in the past through a first-class production that re-creates Los Angeles of nearly a century ago with the homes, furnishings, automobiles, street-cars, trains and fashions of the era. (This is obviously a very segregated Los Angeles and there is not one dark face to be found in the world of Collins—not even a maid or janitor that you might expect in a Clint Eastwood film.) Onto this perfectly set stage, stroll other historic characters, including the Rev. Gustav Briegleb, an influential radio show host who preached from the pulpit and over the air about the corruption in the city’s police department.
Jolie, with her pouty lips painted in the red fashion of the time, conveys the right combination of assertiveness required for her character’s navigation through the world as a single mother, and the ladylike comportment expected of a middle class mother living on a quiet, tree-lined street. Even though Jolie has had her share of kitschy roles that exploit her reputation as a daredevil and temptress, “Changeling” gives her another shot at a role requiring sensitivity and nuance, which will likely earn her award nominations.
The story line is not sappy and does not force us into a pity or sympathy for Collins. Instead, it draws us into her life and times through a series of scenes that are riveting and that are unsparing in depicting the brutish nature of the criminal mind—of those on both sides of the law.
This review also appeared on Tom Joyner's BlackAmericaWeb.com,/i>
You can order Esther Iverem's critically praised We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006 (Thunder’s Mouth Press, April 2007)at Amazon.com or purchase at your favorite bookstore. It makes a wonderful gift! Thanks!
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