Changeling review (eastwood's new movie)
 

I caught this during the weekend. I was wondering how Eastwood would follow up on his ambitious Iwo Jima two film project, I thought Changeling would be a step back from that scope, but in fact it is an extension of that ambition, in a seemingly smaller story.

I walked out of it feeling kind of meh, but lots of scenes stuck with me, now I am much more enthusiastic. I think it represents the best and worst of his directorial renaissance. The script has a lot of Paul Haggis-esque stupidity, such as the cliche mental asylum sequences, bad callbacks and frequent crowd pleasing pay-offs at the expense of all subtlety. I would be surprised if he didn't do an uncredited re-write.

The best scenes for me were the first few, with just Angelina and her son, when the scope expands, it gets a little lost. There are several scenes I am surprised an editor didn't point out, that they were completely unnecessary... the pace is poor. Wikipedia said Clint Eastwood shot the first draft, and it shows.

As I said it represents the worst and best of Eastwood's talent, the performances are all great, it is beautifully made, and there are a lot of bold, striking and surprising sequences. It is the failure of a very solid artist and shows Clint Eastwood is still a major force. It got better reviews in Cannes, where it lost the palm d'or by only 3 votes, I can see both sides. Though I doubt it will achieve best picture or director nomination, it will probably end up in the top ten of the year for me.

Actually according to the screenwriter it lost by two votes because they didn't believe it was a true story.