Changeling ***

Directed by Clint Eastwood,
with Angelina Jolie, Jeffrey Donovan, John Malkovich, Michael Kelly, Amy Ryan, Jason Butler
2008 140 min.

Angelina Jolie plays a single mom living in Los Angeles in 1929. One day she comes home to find her son missing. In desperation she calls the police for help, but from the 1st day they seem unconcerned saying that he probably went to a friends house. Eventually, after a long search, a boy turns up on the other side of the country in Illinois. The police think they have found him and bring him home. It is not her son, and she says so from the beginning, but they insist that he is and that he has changed. She takes him in because the boy has no place to go and besides, maybe she is mistaken because she is "hysterical" as the police say. The police insist because they don't want to lose face in light of recent scandals. Thy want to look good in the public eye. They coerce her into accepting the boy as her son though she can clearly see he's not. At one point they institutionalize her, which apparently happens to a lot of women who make too much noise.

So it's a story about police corruption in L.A. Apparently L.A. has a long tradition of police corruption. It's also a story of how a 'weak' woman (this was 1928 after all and Angeline plays the mother well - the meek and submissive mother whose singleness makes her even more vulnerable in this pre-femenist era) becomes strong. She has to learn to become strong and stick up for her self.

In the last decade or so, Clint Eastwood has become one of my favorite directors, and I always look forward to one of his "serious" films. Angeline Jolie is also getting some nice roles recently and I am duly impressed with her also.