Changeling, frustrating

Changeling
Starring: Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan, Jason Butler Harner. Directed by Clint Eastwood. 2 hr., 20 min. Rated R.

Despite more recent competition from the Tate/La Bianca killings, the Rodney King beating and the O.J. trial, it's remarkable how tenaciously events like the Zoot Suit Riots, the killing of Bugsy Siegel and the Black Dahlia murder have remained fresh in the collective consciousness of Los Angeles, and equally remarkable how completely the intertwined cases of Christine Collins and Gordon Stewart Northcott have lapsed into obscurity ... until, of course, the publicity runup to Clint Eastwood's Changeling.

In March of 1928, 9-year-old Walter Collins disappeared from the home he shared with his mother, Christine (Angelina Jolie), a supervisor at the telephone company. For months, the official investigation went nowhere, until police in DeKalb, Ill., claimed to have found him, alive and well. With great ballyhoo, the Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) reunited mother and child, only to have Christine announce that this wasn't her son. Despite ample corroboration from doctors, teachers and neighbors, the L.A.P.D. — apparently in one of its most lawless and corrupt phases, which is saying a lot — was so obstinate about not admitting to a mistake that it insisted Christine was delusional and, without warrant, grabbed her and tossed her in a mental hospital.

Around the same time, other cops were uncovering the deeds of Northcott (Jason Butler Harner), who had raped, tortured and murdered 20 boys (give or take), possibly including Walter.

Prior to seeing the movie, I avoided researching the case so as not to spoil any plot developments. My caution was excessive, since the answer to the biggest question — whether or not the returned boy is Walter — is pretty obvious: If he weren't an impostor, there wouldn't be anything special about the case.

At the very beginning, the screen proclaims this “a true story.” And Internet research suggests that it cleaves very close to real events ... the problem being that coverage of the film, much of it based upon (or reprinted directly from) the press kit, has completely obscured whatever pre-Changeling information might be out there. The closest thing to a reliable source is the package of archival stories available on the L.A. Times Web site.

As closely as can be determined, the biggest change screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski has made is to downplay the existence of Collins' husband, who was stuck in Folsom prison at the time and claimed that the kidnapping might have been at the behest of his enemies in the slammer. Removing this dead-end subplot doesn't change the main story.

Reality being more ragged than cinema, the apparent veracity has the effect of accentuating one of Eastwood's biggest negatives. Even some of his best films — Mystic River, most notably — are structurally awkward, reaching a climax well before the story is finished. In Changeling, three-quarters of the movie takes place in 1928, but the final quarter jams together events from the subsequent seven years. It's essentially a classic three-act drama ... but with two or three epilogues. The truer Eastwood and Straczynski cleave to the facts, the lumpier the forward motion gets.

At the same time, many of the instances in which they do take dramatic license come across as forced and artificial. John Malkovich plays the radio preacher who takes up Christine's cause; the film intercuts his activities with Christine's in a way that has him repeatedly showing up to help her at exactly the right moment. That may be within standard film conventions, but when he's nowhere in sight one minute but materializes on a random street just in time to catch the heroine as she faints ... well, that's really a bit much.

Eastwood and his collaborators are flawlessly tasteful, re-creating a beautiful, burnished period L.A., but for all their care, anachronisms and continuity errors creep in nonetheless. Most egregious in the former category is the reference to Northcott as a “serial killer” — a term that wasn't used until the 1970s. In the latter category, we have Collins, working late at the office and listening to the 1935 Oscar ceremony on the radio; she gets a phone call about a new development in the case, dashes out and arrives at the police station in broad daylight. Southern California traffic may have already sucked in the ’30s, but all night to get part way across town?

The performances are mostly effective, with Eastwood favoring a melodramatic intensity that makes the villains — both Northcott and the police Captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) — seem like refugees from a film of the period. As the sweaty, twitching killer, Harner is sometimes reminiscent of Peter Lorre in Casablanca. (Another curious deviation from the real events: The real Northcott was 21 years old when arrested, not that much older than his victims or his teenage assistant; Harner is in his mid-30s, which significantly changes the dynamic.)

Likewise, as the film progresses, Jolie turns increasingly into the heroine of a Golden Era “women's picture” — Joan Fontaine or Olivia de Havilland under assault by an evil male power structure. Malkovich, from his first appearance, isn't playing a real person so much as a type — which may reflect his character's self-created radio persona as a righteous crusader.

Eastwood wrote the music, as has been his custom in recent years. I've generally been a fan of his scores, but here the constant repetition of a single pretty melody grows wearying and doesn't really support the dramatic tone of the story.

For all these nitpicks, Changeling is basically solid —enjoyable, if overlong, at two hours and 20 minutes. Some of Eastwood's most devoted critical boosters have expressed disappointment, but I found it to be only a shade less compelling than usual. It's not just that I liked it more than they did, but also that, while I'm a fan, I like those other films a little less. Both the best qualities and worst flaws in Changeling have been evident in his work for some time now.