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Friday 9 January 2009

Sting in its tale

Changeling
15, Nationwide

Changeling, produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, is a most melodramatic melodrama starring Angelina Jolie and her totally amazing, bee-stung lips. (I was stung by a bee once, but on the eyelid; it didn’t look so great.) Anyway, based on a true story, it’s set in Los Angeles in 1928 and is about a single mother, Christine Collins (Jolie) whose nine-year-old son, Walter, goes missing and when returned by the police five months later, turns out not to be him at all. The police insist the boy is Walter, and insist Christine accepts him as Walter, but Christine knows he is not, just as any mother knows who is and who isn’t her son — not that the son will always want to know her. (Trust me, I’ve got a teenage boy who doesn’t want to know me at all, although it could just be the bee-stung eyelid.)

According to the poster, Jolie’s performance is ‘Oscar-assured’ — having, presumably, been inspected and approved by the International Institute of Oscar Assurances, as based in Beverly Hills — but I don’t know. I seriously, honestly, truthfully don’t. On paper, Changeling has everything that should do it for me and should have me blubbing like the blubbing old fool that I so often am: a real mystery, a real fight against the most horrific injustice and, underlying it all, a mother’s heart entwined with her child’s safety. But? Up there, on the screen, it feels empty, monotonous, bloated, and all of it’s two hours and 20 minutes, if not all of it’s seven hours and 50 minutes. Really? Only two hours and 20 minutes? Well I never. As for the blubbing, I should have even recognised the moments where, usually, I would be snivelling and choking like a mad thing, but nothing. I think it’s because the film’s energy is so flat and sapped I wasn’t stirred, although can not say for sure until the American Association of Movie Blubbing (based in New York, but with satellite offices globally) looks into my case and reports back.

More articles from: Deborah Ross | this section

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