"our lady of humanitarian narcissism"

Clint Eastwood’s Changeling feels, much like the director himself, like a relic from another era. It’s the type of melodramatic, bravura yarn about a down-to-earth heroine’s perilous travails that seems better suited for the Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Fontaine set. It’s surprising, then, to see this sudsy tragedy feature the decidedly contemporary Angelina Jolie, she of the big lips, smoky eyes, and world-saving ambition.

Jolie plays Christine Collins, a single mother living in 1920s Los Angeles. Over the course of the sometimes laborious two-and-a-half running time, she encounters an otherworldly level of suffering (and wardrobe changes) that would make Susan Hayward proud. One day, Christine returns from her job at the phone company to find her young son, Walter, missing. When she calls the police, she gets the first of what turns into many brush offs. Her search for her son exposes a corrupt police department that would rather silence its critics than admit its own mistakes. When the department uncovers a boy they claim is Walter, but clearly is not, Christine challenges them. Her crusade to find her real son attracts the attention of an evangelical blowhard (John Malkovich, who acted opposite Eastwood to much better effect in In the Line of Fire), who becomes an unlikely partner in Christine’s quest.

Eastwood based the film on a true story, and the narrative suffers for it. True life simply doesn’t move at the compressed pace that even a slow-moving film requires. And even the most exciting lives require a little dramatic license to suit a compelling narrative. Eastwood is too married to the real-life events to keep the audience entertained. With all of the legal and bureaucratic gymnastics that Christine must endure, the film often feels like a second-rate depression-era crime procedural. Think CSI: Pasadena. Additionally, a critical subplot involving a ruthless serial killer is entirely mishandled. It’s a surprising misstep for Eastwood, who has experienced an unlikely career renaissance with the effortlessly thrilling Mystic River and the beautifully-acted Million Dollar Baby.

Given the borderline absurd level of suffering that Christine undergoes, it’s a testament to Jolie’s talent that her performance does not become overrun with hysterics. Yes, she has a nasty run-in with electroshock. Yes, she has the requisite “Give me an Oscar” cry scene. Yes, she must endure not one, but two simultaneously occurring trials. And all without smudging her make-up. It’s a star vehicle of the classical model, and even with the best lighting and killer crimson lipstick, Jolie manages to make Christine’s suffering honest and relatable.

the last movie i saw

With her sullen cheeks and detached gaze, it’s hard to believe the Kristin Scott Thomas we see in I’ve Loved You So Long is the same actress who stunned us in The English Patient 12 years ago. That actress was luminous and radiated an old Hollywood glamour. Her screen presence still held a distant, aristocratic coolness, one that went on to define her subsequent work in The Horse Whisperer and her underrated comic turn in Gosford Park. In this film, a probing French drama that moves at a clip, Scott Thomas leverages her chilly persona to create a fascinating character and deliver an unforgettable emotional wallop.

When we first meet Juliette (Scott Thomas), all we know is that she has just been released from prison and is moving to a French university town to live with her sister (an impressive Elsa Zylberstein) and her family. As we spend more time with Juliette, writer/director Philippe Claudel slowly and masterfully reveals the details of Juliette’s lengthy incarceration, all culminating in a shocking, devastating revelation in the film’s final moments. Until this explosive finale, though, the true drama and tension comes from what is not said and what Claudel keeps from his audience.

As we see Juliette listlessly confront the realities of rebuilding a life – finding a new job, meeting new people, reconnecting with forgotten relatives – her silence and indifference indicate the crippling repercussions of the crime she committed years ago. Each time she tries to reach out for human contact, most notably when she picks up a paramour in a café, she recoils at the slightest hint of a genuine connection. And while the film carries all the trappings of a Lifetime-worthy domestic drama – crime, bitterness, familial dysfunction – Claudel and his actors approach the material with subtle dignity.

Each member of the cast provides an intriguing characterization, but nobody leaves as distinct an impression as Scott Thomas. It’s a largely silent performance, especially during the film’s first two-thirds where Juliette is most acutely unable to forge a connection with anyone. Scott Thomas is able to convey a great deal of anguish, strife, and anger through her characters painful stoicism. It’s an intricate marvel. It certainly has been Scott Thomas’ year. She’s currently receiving raves for her performance in The Seagull on Broadway, and she delivered a funny, touching supporting performance in this summer’s fantastic Tell No One (also in French).

playing to an empty stadium

The last movie I walked out of was David Cronenberg’s dull, hollow Eastern Promises. It wouldn’t make anybody’s list for worst film ever (Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake holds that spot for me), but its plodding mediocrity was more than I could stomach. I felt the same sense of antsy dissatisfaction with Oliver Stone’s sluggish, defanged W. Neither a satire nor a traditional biopic of our current President, this one lazily glides through a score of anecdotes we’ve already heard and tries to pass it off as a narrative. By the time George Bush is traversing the range at his Crawford ranch with Tony Blair and Condaleeza Rice in tow, I knew I had seen enough. Yes, I walked out. My only regret is that I didn’t do so sooner.

Stone has made a career out of making inflammatory, revisionist historical epics. JFK pushes forth controversial conspiracy theories as fact, and Nixon eviscerates a worthy target with gleeful, fact-fudging verbosity. It’s a shame Stone left his boxing gloves at home this time around, because his take on Bush is notable only for its bland, apolitical, and almost objective interpretation. There’s a place for objectivity in hard news, but it doesn’t cut it in cinema.

We get the same story we’ve always heard. Hard-partying frat boy turns unlikely heir to a political dynasty. Stone tries to shape the tale into an Oedipal drama about W’s inability to please his father (a totally unconvincing James Cromwell as Bush Sr.), but it’s hard to buy this dim-witted politico as a tragic hero. And that’s about as much focus as we get. The political policy scenes that follow, especially those that depict the build-up to the current war in Iraq, lack the nuance of even a sub-par episode of The West Wing.

Brolin, who carried last year’s No Country for Old Men with gusto, doesn’t have the range to pull off a winning impersonation of W. We never really believe we’re watching the real thing, even when Brolin mutters an amusing “bushism.” He fares better, though, than the supporting cast, which plays like a rogue’s gallery of rejected SNL impersonations. Richard Dreyfuss hams it up as Dick Cheney, Ellen Burstyn wears an awful wig as Barbara Bush, and Toby Jones looks and acts nothing like Karl Rove. The worst, though, must be Thandie Newton, whose cartoonish interpretation of Condi Rice looks and sounds like a bad Halloween costume.

Elizabeth Banks, as Laura Bush, is the only actor who manages to turn in a fully-realized performance. If it were her story, I might have stuck around.

the people have spoken (and i like what they have to say)