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Changeling (film)
Encyclopedia
Changeling is a 2008 American drama film directed by Clint Eastwood
and written by J. Michael Straczynski
. Based on real-life events in 1928 Los Angeles
, the film stars Angelina Jolie
as a woman who is reunited with her missing son—only to realize he is an impostor. She confronts the city authorities, who vilify her as an unfit mother and brand her delusional. The dramatized incident was connected to the "Wineville Chicken Coop" kidnapping and murder case. Changeling explores female disempowerment, political corruption, child endangerment and the repercussions of violence. Ron Howard
intended to direct, but scheduling conflicts led to his replacement by Eastwood. Howard and Imagine Entertainment
partner Brian Grazer
produced, alongside Malpaso Productions
' Robert Lorenz
and Eastwood. Universal Pictures
financed and distributed the film.
After hearing about the case from a contact at Los Angeles City Hall, Straczynski spent a year researching the historical record. He said he drew 95% of the script from around 6,000 pages of documentation. The shooting script
was Straczynski's first draft and his first produced film screenplay. Several actors campaigned for the lead; Eastwood cast Jolie partly because he felt her face fit the period setting. The film also stars Jeffrey Donovan
, Jason Butler Harner
, John Malkovich
, Michael Kelly
, and Amy Ryan
. Most of the characters were based on real life people, while some were composites
. Principal photography
began on October 15, 2007, and concluded in ; filming took place in Los Angeles and throughout Southern California
. Eastwood's low-key direction led actors and crew to note the calmness of the set and the short working days. In post-production
, scenes were supplemented with computer-generated skylines, backgrounds, vehicles and people.
Changeling premiered at the 61st Cannes Film Festival
on May 20, 2008, to critical acclaim. Further festival appearances preceded a limited release in the United States on October 24, 2008. The film opened wide in North America on October 31, 2008, in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2008, and in Australia on February 5, 2009. Critical reaction was more mixed than at Cannes; the acting and story were generally praised, while criticism focused on the film's conventional staging and lack of nuance. It earned in box office revenue worldwide, of which $35.7 million was earned in the United States and Canada. Changeling received nominations in three Academy Award and eight BAFTA Award
categories.
) returns home late from work to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter (Griffith
), is missing. Reverend Gustav Briegleb (Malkovich) publicizes Christine's plight and rails against the Los Angeles Police Department
(LAPD) for its incompetence, corruption and the extrajudicial punishment
meted out by its "Gun Squad", led by Chief James E. Davis
(Colm Feore
). Several months after Walter's disappearance, the LAPD tells Christine that he has been found alive. Believing the positive publicity will negate recent criticism of the department, the LAPD organizes a public reunion. Although "Walter" (Devon Conti) claims he is Christine's son, she says he is not. Captain J. J. Jones (Donovan), the head of the LAPD's Juvenile Division, insists the boy is Walter and pressures Christine into taking him home "on a trial basis".
After Christine confronts Jones with physical discrepancies between "Walter" and her son, Jones arranges for a medical doctor to visit her. He tells Christine that "Walter" is shorter than before his disappearance because trauma has shrunk his spine, and that the man who took Walter had him circumcised. A newspaper prints a story that implies Christine is an unfit mother; Briegleb tells Christine it was planted by police to discredit her. Walter's teacher and dentist give Christine signed letters confirming "Walter" is an impostor. Christine tells her story to the press; as a result, Jones sends her to Los Angeles County Hospital
's "psychopathic ward". She befriends inmate Carol Dexter (Ryan), who tells Christine she is one of several women who were sent there for challenging police authority. Dr. Steele (Denis O'Hare
) deems Christine delusional and forces her to take mood-regulating pills. Steele says he will release Christine if she admits she was mistaken about "Walter"; she refuses.
Detective Ybarra (Kelly) travels to a ranch in Wineville
, Riverside County
, to arrange the deportation of 15-year-old Sanford Clark to Canada. The boy's uncle, Gordon Northcott (Harner), has fled after Ybarra unwittingly alerted him to his visit. Clark tells Ybarra that Northcott forced him to help kidnap and murder around 20 boys and identifies Walter as one of them. Jones tells Briegleb that Christine is in protective custody following a mental breakdown. Jones orders Clark's deportation, but Ybarra makes Clark reveal the murder site. Briegleb secures Christine's release by showing Steele a newspaper story about the Wineville killings that names Walter as a possible victim. "Walter" reveals his motive was to secure transport to Los Angeles to see his favorite actor, Tom Mix
, and says the police told him to lie about being Christine's son. The RCMP
capture Northcott in Vancouver, Canada. Christine's attorney (Pierson) secures a court order for the release of the other unfairly imprisoned women.
On the day of the city council's hearing into the case, Christine and Briegleb arrive at Los Angeles City Hall, where they encounter thousands of protesters demanding answers from the city. The hearing is intercut with scenes from Northcott's trial. The council concludes that Jones and Davis should be removed from duty, and that extrajudicial internments by police must be reviewed. Northcott's jury finds him guilty of murder and the judge sentences him to death by hanging. Two years later, Christine has not given up her search for Walter. Northcott sends her a message saying he is willing to tell her what happened to Walter on condition that Christine meet him before his execution. She visits Northcott, but he refuses to tell her if he killed her son. Northcott is executed the next day.
In 1935, David Clay—one of the boys assumed to have been killed—is found alive. He reveals that one of the boys with whom he was imprisoned was Walter, who courageously came back to help David get through the barbed wires. David, Walter and two other boys escaped, but were separated. David does not know whether Walter was recaptured, giving Christine hope he is alive.
, Canada (with the permission of his mother and reluctant father) by his uncle, Gordon Stewart Northcott. Northcott took Clark to a ranch in Wineville, California, where he regularly beat and sexually abused the boy—until , when the police took Clark into custody after a family member informed them of the situation. Clark revealed that he was forced to help Northcott and his mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, in killing three young boys after Northcott had kidnapped and molested them. The police found no bodies at the ranch—Clark said they were dumped in the desert—but discovered body parts, blood-stained axes, and personal effects belonging to missing children. The Northcotts fled to Canada, but were arrested and extradited to the United States. Sarah Louise initially confessed to the murders, including that of Walter Collins. She later retracted her statement; Gordon, who had confessed to killing five boys, did likewise.
After Christine Collins was released from Los Angeles County Hospital, she sued the police department twice, winning the second lawsuit. Although Captain Jones was ordered to pay Collins $10,800, he never did. A city council welfare hearing recommended that Jones and Chief of Police James E. Davis
leave their posts, but both were later reinstated. The California State Legislature
later made it illegal for the police to commit someone to a psychiatric facility without a warrant. Northcott was convicted of the murders of Lewis Winslow (12), Nelson Winslow (10) and an unidentified Mexican boy; after his conviction, Northcott was reported to have admitted to up to 20 murders, though he later denied the claim. Northcott was executed by hanging in 1930. Sarah Louise was convicted of Walter Collins' murder and served almost 12 years in prison. In 1930, the residents of Wineville changed the town's name to Mira Loma to escape the notoriety brought by the case.
was contacted by a source at Los Angeles City Hall
. The source told him that officials were planning to burn numerous archive documents, among them "something [Straczynski] should see". The source had discovered a transcript of the city council welfare hearings concerning Collins and the aftermath of her son's disappearance. Straczynski became fascinated with the case; he carried out some research, and wrote a spec script
titled The Strange Case of Christine Collins. Several studios and independent producers optioned the script, but it never found a buyer. Straczynski felt he lacked the time to devote to making the story work and only returned to the project following the cancellation of his television show Jeremiah
in 2004. After 20 years as a screenwriter and producer for television, Straczynski felt he needed a break from the medium, so he spent a year researching the Collins case through archived criminal, county courthouse, city hall and city morgue records. He said he collected around 6,000 pages of documentation on Collins and the Wineville murders, before learning enough to "figure out how to tell it". He wrote the first draft of the new script in 11 days. Straczynski's agent passed the script to producer Jim Whitaker
. He forwarded it to Ron Howard
, who optioned it immediately.
In June 2006, Universal Studios and Howard's Imagine Entertainment bought the script for Howard to direct. The film was on a shortlist of projects for Howard after coming off the commercial success of The Da Vinci Code
. In , Universal fast tracked the production. When Howard chose Frost/Nixon
and Angels & Demons as his next two directing projects, it became clear he could not direct Changeling until 2009. After Howard stepped down, it looked as if the film would not be made, despite admiration for the script in the industry. Howard and Imagine partner Brian Grazer
began looking for a new director to helm the project; they pitched the film to Eastwood in , and he agreed to direct immediately after reading the script. Eastwood said his memories of growing up during the Great Depression
meant that whenever a project dealing with the era landed in his hands, he "redoubled his attention" upon it. Eastwood also cited the script's focus on Collins—rather than the "Freddy Krueger
" story of Northcott's crimes—as a factor in deciding to make the film.
elements of the plot. Straczynski said he had gathered so much information about the case that it was difficult to work out how to tell it. To let the story develop at its own pace, he put the project aside to allow himself to forget the less essential elements and bring into focus the parts he wanted to tell. He described what he saw as two overlaid triangles: "the first triangle, with the point up, is Collins' story. You start with her, and her story gets broader and broader and begins having impact from all kinds of places. The overlay on that was an upside down triangle with the base on top, which is the panorama of Los Angeles at that time—1928. And it begins getting narrower and narrower toward the bottom, bearing down on her." Once Straczynski saw this structure, he felt he could write the story. He chose to avoid focusing on the atrocities of the Wineville murders in favor of telling the story from Collins' perspective; Straczynski said she was the only person in the story without a hidden agenda, and it was her tenacity—as well as the legacy the case left throughout California's legal system—that had attracted him to the project. He said, "My intention was very simple: to honor what Christine Collins did."
With Collins as the inspiration, Straczynski said he was left with a strong desire "to get it right"; he approached it more like "an article for cinema" than a regular film. He stuck close to the historical record because he felt the story was bizarre enough that adding too many fictional elements would call into question its integrity. Straczynski claimed that 95% of the script's content came from the historical record; he said there were only two moments at which he had to "figure out what happened", due to the lack of information in the records. One was the sequence set in the psychopathic ward, for which there was only limited after-the-fact testimony. Straczynski originally wrote a shorter account of Collins' incarceration. His agent suggested the sequence needed development, so Straczynski extrapolated events based on standard practice in such institutions at the time. It was at this stage he created composite character Carol Dexter, who was intended to symbolize the women of the era who had been unjustly committed. Straczynski cited his academic background, including majors
in psychology and sociology, as beneficial to writing the scenes, specifically one in which Steele distorts Collins' words to make her appear delusional. Straczynski worked at making the dialogue authentic, while avoiding an archaic tone. He cited his experience imagining alien psyches when writing Babylon 5
as good practice for putting himself in the cultural mindset of the 1920s.
Straczynski described specific visual cues in the screenplay, such as in Sanford Clark's confession scene. Clark's flashback to a falling axe is juxtaposed with the crumbling ash from Detective Ybarra's cigarette. The image served two purposes: it was an aesthetic correlation between the axe and the cigarette, and it suggested that Ybarra was so shocked by Clark's confession that he had not moved or even smoked in the 10 minutes Clark took to tell his story. As with most of the cues, Eastwood shot the scene as written. To ensure the veracity of the story, Straczynski incorporated quotes from the historical record, including court testimony, into the dialogue. He also included photocopies of news clippings every 15–20 pages in the script to remind people the story was a true one. So the credits could present the film as "a true story" rather than as "based on" one, Straczynski went through the script with Universal's legal department, providing attribution for every scene. Straczynski believed the only research error he made was in a scene that referenced Scrabble
, pre-dating its appearance on the market by two years. He changed the reference to a crossword puzzle. He did not alter the shooting script
any further from his first draft; though Straczynski had written two more drafts for Howard, Eastwood insisted the first draft be filmed as he felt it had the clearest voice of the three. Straczynski said, "Clint's funny—if he likes it, he'll do it, that's the end of the discussion. When I met with him to ask, 'Do you want any changes, do you want any things cut, added to, subtracted from, whatever,' he said, 'No. The draft is fine. Let's shoot the draft.
Among the changes Straczynski made from the historical record was to omit Northcott's mother—who participated in the murders—from the story. He also depicted Northcott's trial as taking place in Los Angeles, though it was held in Riverside
. The title is derived from Western European folklore
and refers to a creature—a "changeling
"—left by fairies in place of a human child. Due to the word's association with the supernatural, Straczynski intended it only as a temporary title, believing he would be able to change it later on.
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The filmmakers retained the names of the real-life protagonists, though several supporting characters were composites
of people and types of people from the era. Angelina Jolie
plays Christine Collins ; five actors campaigned for the role, including Reese Witherspoon
and Hilary Swank
. Howard and Grazer suggested Jolie; Eastwood agreed, believing that her face fit the period setting. Jolie joined the production in . She was initially reluctant because, as a mother, she found the subject matter distressing. She said she was persuaded by Eastwood's involvement, and the screenplay's depiction of Collins as someone who recovered from adversity and had the strength to fight the odds. Jolie found playing Collins very emotional. She said the most difficult part was relating to the character, because Collins was relatively passive. Jolie ultimately based her performance on her own mother, who died in 2007. For scenes at the telephone exchange, Jolie learned to roller skate in high heels, a documented practice of the period.
Jeffrey Donovan
portrays Captain J.J. Jones, a character Donovan became fascinated with because of the power Jones wielded in the city. The character quotes the real Jones' public statements throughout the film, including the scene in which he has Collins committed. Donovan's decision to play Jones with a slight Irish accent was his own. John Malkovich
joined the production in as Reverend Gustav Briegleb. Eastwood cast Malkovich against type
as he felt this would bring "a different shading" to the character. Jason Butler Harner
plays Gordon Northcott, whom Harner described as "a horrible, horrible, wonderful person". He said Northcott believes he shares a connection with Collins due to their both being in the headlines: "In his eyes, they're kindred spirits." Harner landed the role after one taped audition. Casting director Ellen Chenoweth explained that Eastwood chose Harner over more well-known actors who wanted the part because Harner displayed "more depth and variety" and was able to project "a slight craziness" without evoking Charles Manson
. Eastwood was surprised by the resemblance between Northcott and Harner, saying they looked "very much" alike when Harner was in makeup.
As Harner did for the Northcott role, Amy Ryan
auditioned via tape for the role of Carol Dexter. She cited the filming of a fight scene during which Eastwood showed her "how to throw a movie punch" as her favorite moment of the production. Michael Kelly
portrays Detective Lester Ybarra, who is a composite of several people from the historical record. Kelly was chosen based on a taped audition; he worked around scheduling conflicts with the television series Generation Kill
, which he was filming in Africa at the same time. Geoff Pierson
plays Sammy Hahn, a defense attorney known for taking high-profile cases. He represents Collins and in doing so plants the seeds for overturning "Code 12" internments, used by police to jail or commit those deemed difficult or an inconvenience. Code 12 was often used to commit women without due process
. Colm Feore
portrays Chief of Police James E. Davis, whose backstory was changed from that of his historical counterpart. Reed Birney plays Mayor George E. Cryer
; Denis O'Hare
plays composite character Doctor Jonathan Steele; Gattlin Griffith
plays Walter Collins, and Devon Conti plays his supplanter, Arthur Hutchins. Eddie Alderson
plays Northcott's nephew and accomplice, Sanford Clark.
James J. Murakami supervised the production design. Location scouting
revealed that many of the older buildings in Los Angeles had been torn down, including the entire neighborhood where Collins lived. Suburban areas in San Dimas
, San Bernardino
and Pasadena
doubled for 1920s Los Angeles instead. The Old Town district of San Dimas stood in for Collins' neighborhood and some adjacent locales. Murakami said Old Town was chosen because very little had changed since the 1920s. It was used for interiors and exteriors; the crew decorated the area with a subdued color palette to evoke feelings of comfort. For some exterior shots they renovated derelict properties in neighborhoods of Los Angeles that still possessed 1920s architecture. The crew converted the third floor of the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles into a replica of the 1920s Los Angeles City Council
chambers.
The 1918 Santa Fe Depot in San Bernardino doubled for the site of Collins' reunion with "Walter". The production filmed scenes set at San Quentin
in the community. A small farm on the outskirts of Lancaster, California
, stood in for the Wineville chicken ranch. The crew recreated the entire ranch, referencing archive newspaper photographs and visits to the original ranch to get a feel for the topography and layout. Steve Lech, president of the Riverside Historical Society, was employed as a consultant and accompanied the crew on its visits.
The production sourced around 150 vintage motor cars, dating from 1918 to 1928, from collectors throughout Southern California. In some cases the cars were in too good a condition, so the crew modified them to make the cars appear like they were in everyday use; they sprayed dust and water onto the bodywork, and to "age" some of the cars they applied a coating that simulated rust and scratches. The visual effects team retouched shots of Los Angeles City Hall—on which construction was completed in 1928—to remove weathering and newer surrounding architecture. Costume designer Deborah Hopper
researched old Sears department store
catalogs, back issues of Life magazine
, and high-school yearbooks to ensure the costumes were historically accurate. Hopper sourced 1920s clothing for up to 1,000 people; this was difficult because the fabrics of the period were not resilient. She found sharp wool suits for the police officers. The style for women of all classes was to dress to create a demure silhouette, using dropped waist
dresses, cloche hat
s that complemented bob cut
hairstyles, fur-trimmed coats and knitted gloves. Jolie said the costumes Collins wore formed an integral part of her approach to the character. Hopper consulted historians and researched archive footage of Collins to replicate her look. Hopper dressed Jolie in austere grays and browns with knitted gloves, wool serge
skirts accompanying cotton blouses, Mary Jane shoes
, crocheted corsages
and Art Deco
jewelry. In the 1930s sequences at the end of the film, Jolie's costumes become more shapely and feminine, with a decorative stitching around the waistline that was popular to the era.
began on October 15, 2007, finishing two days ahead of its 45-day schedule on December 14, 2007. Universal Pictures provided a budget of $55 million. The film was Eastwood's first for a studio other than Warner Bros.
since Absolute Power
(1997). Filming mainly took place on the Universal Studios backlot
in Los Angeles. The backlot's New York Street and Tenement Street depicted downtown
Los Angeles. Tenement Street also stood in for the exterior of Northcott's sister's Vancouver apartment; visual effects added the city to the background. The production also used the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank
, California. Eastwood had clear childhood memories of 1930s Los Angeles and attempted to recreate several details in the film: the town hall, at the time one of the tallest buildings in the city; the city center, which was one of the busiest in the world; and the "perfectly functioning" Pacific Electric Railway
, the distinctive red streetcars of which feature closely in two scenes. The production used two functioning replica streetcars for these shots, with visual effects employed for streetcars in the background.
Eastwood is known for his economical film shoots; his regular camera operator, Steve Campanelli, indicated the rapid pace at which Eastwood films—and his intimate, near-wordless direction—also featured during Changelings shoot. Eastwood limited rehearsals and takes
to garner more authentic performances. Jolie said, "You've got to get your stuff together and get ready because he doesn't linger ... He expects people to come prepared and get on with their work." Campanelli sometimes had to tell Jolie what Eastwood wanted from a scene, as Eastwood talked too softly. To provide verisimilitude
to certain scenes, Eastwood sometimes asked Jolie to play them quietly, as if just for him. At the same time he would ask his camera operator to start filming discreetly, without Jolie's seeing it. Malkovich noted Eastwood's direction as "redefining economical", saying Eastwood was quiet and did not use the phrases "action" and "cut". He said, "Some [directors]—like Clint Eastwood or Woody Allen—don't really like to be tortured by a million questions. They hire you, and they figure you know what to do, and you should do it ... And that's fine by me." Ryan also noted the calmness of the set, observing that her experiences working with director Sidney Lumet
on 100 Centre Street and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
were useful due to his sharing Eastwood's preference for filming a small number of takes. Donovan said Eastwood seldom gave him direction other than to "go ahead", and that Eastwood did not even comment on his decision to play Jones with a slight Irish accent: "Actors are insecure and they want praise, but he's not there to praise you or make you feel better ... All he's there to do is tell the story, and he hired actors to tell their story." Gaffer
Ross Dunkerley said he often had to work on a scene without having seen a rehearsal: "Chances are we'll talk about it for a minute or two, and then we're executing it."
The original edit was almost three hours long; to hone it to 141 minutes, Eastwood cut material from the first part of the film to get to Collins' story sooner. To improve the pacing he also cut scenes that focused on Reverend Briegleb. Eastwood deliberately left the ending of the film ambiguous to reflect the uncertain fates of several characters in the history. He said that while some stories aimed to finish at the end of a film, he preferred to leave it open-ended.
's sixth film with Eastwood. Despite the muted palette, the film is more colorful than some previous Stern–Eastwood collaborations. Stern referenced a large book of period images. He attempted to evoke Conrad Hall
's work on Depression
-set film The Day of the Locust
, as well as match what he called the "leanness" of Mystic River
s look. Stern said the challenge was to make Changeling as simple as possible to shoot. To focus more on Jolie's performance, he tended to avoid the use of fill light
ing. Eastwood did not want the flashbacks to Northcott's ranch to be too much like a horror film—he said the focus of the scene was the effect of the crimes on Sanford Clark—so he avoided graphic imagery in favour of casting the murders in shadow.
Stern shot Changeling in anamorphic format
on 35mm film
using Kodak Vision 500T 5279 film stock. The film was shot on Panavision
cameras and C-Series lenses. Due to the large number of sets, the lighting rigs were more extensive than on other Eastwood productions. The crew made several ceilings from bleached muslin
tiles. Stern lit the tiles from above to produce a soft, warm light that was intended to evoke the period through tones close to antique and sepia
. The crew segregated the tiles using fire safety fabric Duvatyn to prevent light spilling onto neighboring clusters. The key light
was generally softer to match the warm tones given off by the toplights. Stern used stronger skypan
s—more intense than is commonly used for key lighting—to reduce contrasts when applying daytime rain effects, as a single light source tended to produce harder shadows.
Stern lit scenes filmed at the Park Plaza Hotel using dimmable HMI and tungsten lights rigged within balloon light
s. This setup allowed him to "dial in" the color he wanted, as the blend of tones from the tungsten fixtures, wooden walls and natural daylight made it difficult to illuminate the scenes using HMIs or daylight exclusively. Stern said the period setting had little effect overall on his lighting choices because the look was mostly applied in the production design and during digital intermediate
(DI), the post-production digital manipulation of color and lighting. Technicolor Digital Intermediates
carried out the DI. Stern supervised most of the work via e-mailed reference images as he was in Russia shooting another film at the time. He was present at the laboratory for the application of the finishing touches.
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CIS Vancouver
and Pac Title created most of the visual effects, under the overall supervision of Michael Owens. CIS' work was headed by Geoff Hancock and Pac Title's by Mark Freund. Each studio created around 90 shots. Pac Title focused primarily on 2D imagery; VICON House of Moves handled the motion capture
. The effects work consisted mainly of peripheral additions: architecture, vehicles, crowds and furniture. CIS used 3D modeling package Maya
to animate city scenes before rendering
them in mental ray
; they generated matte painting
s in Softimage XSI
and Maya, and used Digital Fusion
for some 2D shots. The team's work began with research into 1928 Los Angeles; they referenced historical photographs and data on the urban core's population density. CIS had to generate mostly new computer models, textures and motion capture because the company's existing effects catalog consisted primarily of modern era elements. CIS supplemented exteriors with skylines and detailed backdrops. They created set extensions digitally and with matte paintings. CIS created city blocks by using shared elements of period architecture that could be combined, rearranged and restacked to make buildings of different widths and heights; that way, the city could look diverse with a minimum of textural variation. CIS referenced vintage aerial photographs of downtown Los Angeles so shots would better reflect the geography of the city, as Hancock felt it important to have a consistency that would allow audiences to understand and become immersed in the environment.
To maintain the rapid shooting pace Eastwood demanded, Owens chose to mostly avoid using bluescreen
technology, as the process can be time-consuming and difficult to light. He instead used rotoscoping, the process whereby effects are drawn directly onto live action shots. Rotoscoping is more expensive than bluescreen, but the technique had proved reliable for Eastwood when he made extensive use of it on Flags of Our Fathers
(2006) to avoid shooting against bluescreen on a mountaintop. For Owens, the lighting was better, and he considered rotoscoping to be "faster, easier and more natural". Owens used bluescreen in only a few locations, such as at the ends of backlot streets where it would not impact the lighting. The Universal Studios backlot had been used for so many films that Owens thought it important to disguise familiar architecture as much as possible, so some foreground and middle distance buildings were swapped. One of his favorite effects shots was a scene in which Collins exits a taxi in front of the police station. The scene was filmed almost entirely against bluescreen; only Jolie, the sidewalk
, the taxi cab and an extra were real. The completed shot features the full range of effects techniques used in the film: digital extras in the foreground, set extensions, and computer-generated vehicles.
s for their clothing; displacement maps
in the air shader were linked with the motion capture to animate wrinkles in trousers and jackets.
Forgoing the closure
favored by its contemporaries, Changelings final sequence reflects Collins' renewed hope that Walter is alive. The shot is a two and a half minute sequence showing Collins' walking off to become lost in a crowd. The sequence is representative of the range of effects that feature throughout the film; Los Angeles is presented as major character, brought to life by unobtrusive peripheral imagery that allows the viewer to focus on the story and the emotional cues. The "hustle and bustle" of the sequence was required to convey that downtown Los Angeles in 1935 was a congested urban center. In the closing shot, the camera tilts up to reveal miles of city blocks, pedestrians on the streets, cars going by and streetcars running along their tracks. The version of the film that screened at Cannes
did not include this sequence; the scene faded to black as Collins walked away. The new 4,000-frame shot was Owens' idea. He felt the abrupt cut to black pulled the viewer out of the film too quickly, and that it left no room for emotional reflection. Owens said, "There is a legend at the end before the credits. The legend speaks to what happened after the fact, and I think you need to just swallow that for a few moments with the visual still with you." Owens told Eastwood the film should end like Chinatown (1974), in which the camera lifts to take in the scene: "The camera booms up and she walks away from us from a very emotional, poignant scene at the end, walks away into this mass of people and traffic. It's very hopeful and sad at the same time."
Owens did not have time to complete the shot before the Cannes screenings, but afterwards he used cineSync
to conduct most of the work from home. The shot includes two blocks of computer-generated buildings that recede into the distance of a downtown set extension. As Collins disappears into the crowd about a minute into the shot, the live footage is gradually joined with more digital work. The streetcars, tracks and power lines were all computer generated. Live-action extras appear for the first minute of the shot before being replaced by digital ones. The shot was made more complicated by the need to add Massive extras. Owens constructed the scene by first building the digital foreground around the live action footage. He then added the background before filling the scene with vehicles and people.
-influenced score. Featuring lilting guitars and strings, it remains largely low-key throughout. The introduction of brass instrument
s evokes film noir, playing to the film's setting in a city controlled by corrupt police. The theme shifts from piano to a full orchestra, and as the story develops, the strings become more imposing, with an increasing number of sustain
s and rises
. Eastwood introduces voices reminiscent of those in a horror film score during the child murder flashbacks. The score was orchestrated and conducted by Lennie Niehaus
. It was released on CD in North America on , 2008, through record label Varèse Sarabande
.
argues, the film—like Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby
—is "a case of awed respect for a woman who was strong and enduring". The portrait of a vulnerable woman whose mental state is manipulated by the authorities was likened to the treatment of Ingrid Bergman
's character in Gaslight
(1944), who also wondered if she might be insane; Eastwood cited photographs that show Collins smiling with the child she knows is not hers. Like many other women of the period who were deemed disruptive, Collins is forced into the secret custody of a mental institution. The film shows that psychiatry became a tool in the gender politics of the era, only a few years after women's suffrage in the United States
was guaranteed by the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment
. As women ceased to be second-class citizens and began to assert their independence, the male establishment used mental institutions in an effort to disempower them; in common with other unmanageable women, Collins is subjected to medical treatment designed to break her spirit and compel obedience. The film quotes the testimony of the psychiatrist who treated Collins. Eastwood said the testimony evidenced how women were prejudged, and that the behavior of the police reflected how women were seen at the time. He quoted the words of the officer who sent Collins to the mental facility: Something is wrong with you. You're an independent woman. Eastwood said, "The period could not accept [it]".
said this rang as true for 1928 Los Angeles as it did for Poland in 1980 or Pakistan in 2008
. The film directly quotes Chief of police James E. Davis: "We will hold trial on gunmen in the streets of Los Angeles. I want them brought in dead, not alive, and I will reprimand any officer who shows the least bit of mercy to a criminal." It compares police excess to the vigilantism
of the Ku Klux Klan
of the 1920s, as the department's "Gun Squad" carries out illegal executions of criminals—not to eliminate crime, but competition. The pressure from the police hierarchy was a motivator for officers to quickly solve Walter Collins' disappearance, and a potential reason why they ignored the fact they had returned the wrong child.
(1993) and Mystic River
(2003). Changeling is a thematic companion piece to Mystic River, which also depicted a community contaminated by an isolated, violent act against a child—a comparison with which Eastwood agreed. He said that showing a child in danger was "about the highest form of drama you can have", as crimes against them were to him the most horrible. Eastwood explained that crimes against children represented a theft of lives and innocence. He said, "When [a crime] comes along quite as big as this one, you question humanity. It never ceases to surprise me how cruel humanity can be." Samuel Blumenfeld of Le Monde
said the scene featuring Northcott's execution by hanging was "unbearable" due to its attention to detail; he believed it one of the most convincing pleas against the death penalty imaginable. Eastwood noted that for a supporter of capital punishment, Northcott was an ideal candidate, and that in a perfect world the death penalty might be an appropriate punishment for such a crime. He said that crimes against children would be at the top of his list for justifications of capital punishment, but that whether one were pro- or anti-capital punishment, the barbarism of public executions must be recognized. Eastwood argued that in putting the guilty party before his victims' families, justice may be done, but after such a spectacle the family would find it hard to find peace. The scene's realism was deliberate: the audience hears Northcott's neck breaking, his body swings, and his feet shake. It was Eastwood's intention to make it unbearable to watch.
on May 20, 2008. The film was Eastwood's fifth to enter competition at the festival. Its appearance was not part of the original release plan. Universal executives had been looking forward to the festival without the worry associated with screening a film, until Eastwood made arrangements for Changelings appearance. He was pleased with the critical and commercial success that followed Mystic River
s appearance at the festival in 2003 and wanted to generate the same "positive buzz" for Changeling. The film was still in post-production
one week before the start of the festival. It appeared at the 34th Deauville American Film Festival
, held September 5–14, 2008, and had its North American premiere on October 4, 2008 as the centerpiece of the 46th New York Film Festival
, screening at the Ziegfeld Theatre
.
The producers and Universal considered opening Changeling wide in its first weekend to capitalize on Jolie's perceived box office
appeal, but they ultimately modeled the release plan after those of other Eastwood-directed films, Mystic River in particular. While the usual strategy is to open films by notable directors in every major city in the United States to ensure a large opening gross, in what the industry calls a "platform release", Eastwood's films generally open in a small number of theaters before opening wide a week later. Changeling was released in 15 theatersThe theater count refers to individual movie theater
s that may include multiple auditoriums. The screen count refers to individual auditoriums. in nine markets in the United States on October 24, 2008. The marketing strategy involved trailers that promoted Eastwood's involvement and the more commercial mystery thriller elements of the story. Universal hoped the limited release would capitalize on good word-of-mouth support from "serious movie fans" rather than those in the 18–25-year-old demographic
. The film was released across North America on October 31, 2008, playing at 1,850 theaters, expanding to 1,896 theaters by its fourth week. Changeling was released in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2008, in Ireland on November 28, 2008, and in Australia on February 5, 2009.
—the locale of the Wineville killings—generated additional local interest, causing it to outperform the national box office by 45% in its opening weekend.Changeling took $117,862 in 16 Inland Empire theaters, for an average of $7,366 per location. The film surpassed expectations in its second weekend of wide release, declining 22% to take $7.3M. By the fourth week, Changeling had dropped to fifth place at the box office, having taken $27.6M overall. In its sixth week the number of theaters narrowed to 1,010, and Changeling dropped out of the national top ten, though it remained in ninth place on the Inland chart.In the film's sixth week of release in the Inland Empire, it earned $20,540 on 14 screens. Changeling completed its theatrical run in North America on January 8, 2009, having earned $35.7M overall.
Changeling made its international debut in four European markets on November 12–14, 2008, opening in 727 theaters to strong results. Aided by a positive critical reaction, the film took $1.6M in Italy from 299 theaters (a per-location average of $5,402), and $209,000 from 33 screens in Belgium. Changeling had a slower start in France, but improved to post $2.8M from 417 theaters in its first five days, finishing the weekend in second place at the box office. The second week in France saw the box office drop by just 27%, for a total gross of $5.4M. By November 23, 2008, the film had taken $8.6M outside North America. The weekend of November 28–30 saw Changeling take $4.4M from 1,040 theaters internationally; this included its expansion into the United Kingdom, where it opened in third place at the box office, taking $1.9M from 349 theaters. It took $1.5M from the three-day weekend, but the total was boosted by the film's opening two days earlier to avoid competition from previews of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. The return marked the best opening of any Eastwood-directed film in the United Kingdom to that point. Its second week of release in the United Kingdom saw a drop of 27% to $1.1M. Changeling earned $7.6M in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.
Changelings release in other European markets continued throughout . By December 8, the film had opened in 1,167 theaters in nine markets for an international gross of $19.1M. Changelings next significant international release came in Spain on December 19, 2008, where it opened in first place at the box office with $2.0M from 326 theaters. This figure marked the best opening for an Eastwood-directed film in the country to that point; after six weeks it had earned $11.0M. In , major markets in which the film opened included Germany, South Korea and Russia. In Germany, it opened in ninth place at the box office with $675,000 from 194 theaters. South Korea saw a "solid" opening of $450,000 from 155 theaters. In Russia, it opened in eighth place with $292,000 from 95 theaters. By January 26, 2009, the film had taken $47.2M from 1,352 international theaters. Aided by strong word-of-mouth support, Changelings Australian release yielded $3.8M from 74 screens after eight weeks. The film opened in Japan on February 20, 2009, where it topped the chart in its first week with $2.4M from 301 screens. After six weeks, it had earned $12.8M in the country. The film's last major market release was in Mexico on February 27, 2009, where it earned $1.4M. The international gross was $77.3M.
, DVD
and Video on Demand
in North America on February 17, 2009, and in the United Kingdom on March 30, 2009. After its first week of release, Changeling placed fourth in the DVD sales chart with 281,000 units sold for $4.6 million; by its fourth week of release, the film had dropped out of the top 10, having earned $10.1 million. As of the latest figures, 762,000 units have been sold, translating to $12,638,223 in revenue. The DVD release included two featurette
s: Partners in Crime: Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie and The Common Thread: Angelina Jolie Becomes Christine Collins. The Blu-ray Disc release included two additional features: Archives and Los Angeles: Then and Now.
. The award eventually went to Entre les murs
(The Class). Straczynski claimed that Changelings loss by two votes was due to the judges' not believing the story was based on fact. He said they did not believe the police would treat someone as they had Collins. The loss led to Universal's request that Straczynski annotate the script with sources. Although the positive critical notices from Cannes generated speculation that the film would be a serious contender at the 2009 Academy Awards, the North American theatrical release met with a more mixed response. Critics generally judged Changeling well-acted and beautifully shot, but considered the compelling story to have been told too conventionally. Metacritic
, which assigns a normalized
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, reported that reviews were "generally favorable", with an average
score of 63 based on 38 reviews. As of January 28, 2011, 62% of 191 critics listed by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
had given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site reported that 67% of selected notable critics gave it a positive write-up, based on a sample of 12. The film's reception in several European countries was more favorable, and in the United Kingdom 83% of critics listed by Rotten Tomatoes gave Changeling a positive review.
CinemaScore
polls conducted during the opening weekend revealed the average grade cinemagoers gave Changeling was A− on an A+ to F scale. Audiences were mostly older; 68% were over 30 and 61% were women. Audience evaluations of "excellent" and "definitely recommended" were above average. The main reasons given for seeing the film were its story (65%), Jolie (53%), Eastwood (43%), and that it was based on fact (42%).
said Jolie was more affecting than in A Mighty Heart
(2007) because she relied less on artifice. He also noted a surfeit of good supporting performances, Michael Kelly's in particular. Oliver Séguret of Libération
said the cast was the film's best feature. He praised the supporting actors and said Jolie's performance was forceful yet understated. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter
said Jolie shunned her "movie star" persona to appear vulnerable and resolute. He perceived the supporting characters—Amy Ryan's excepted—as having few shades of gray. David Ansen, writing in Newsweek
, echoed the sentiment, but said that "some stories really are about the good guys and the bad". He said that with the distractions of Jolie's celebrity and beauty put aside, she carried the role with restraint and intensity. Manohla Dargis
of The New York Times
felt that Jolie's celebrity was distracting enough to render her unconvincing, and David Denby
of The New Yorker said that while Jolie showed skill and selflessness, the performance and character were uninteresting. He said Collins was one-dimensional, lacking desires or temperament. He cited similar problems with Malkovich's Briegleb, concluding, "The two of them make a very proper and dull pair of collaborators."
McCarthy admired the "outstanding" script, calling it ambitious and deceptively simple. He said Eastwood respected the script by not playing to the melodramatic aspects and not telegraphing the story's scope from the start. Honeycutt wrote that due to its close adherence to the history the drama sagged at one point, but that the film did not feel as long as its 141 minutes because the filmmakers were "good at cutting to the chase". Ansen said Straczynski's dialogue tended to the obvious, but that while the film lacked the moral nuance of Eastwood's others, the well-researched screenplay was "a model of sturdy architecture", each layer of which built audience disgust into a "fine fury". He said, "when the tale is this gripping, why resist the moral outrage?"
Séguret said the film presented a solid recreation of the era, but that Eastwood did not seem inspired by the challenge. Séguret noted that Eastwood kept the embers of the story alight, but that it seldom burst into flames. He likened the experience to being in a luxury car: comfortable yet boring. Denby and Ansen commented that Eastwood left the worst atrocities to audiences' imaginations. Ansen said this was because Eastwood was less interested in the lurid aspects of the case. McCarthy praised the thoughtful, unsensationalized treatment, while Denby cited problems with the austere approach, saying it left the film "both impressive and monotonous". He said Eastwood was presented with the problem of not wanting to exploit the "gruesome" material because this would contrast poorly with the delicate emotions of a woman's longing for her missing son. Denby said Eastwood and Straczynski should have explored more deeply the story's perverse aspects. Instead, he said, the narrative methodically settled the emotional and dramatic issues—"reverently chronicling Christine's apotheosis"—before "[ambling] on for another forty minutes". Ansen said the classical approach lifted the story to another level, and that it embraced horror film conventions only in the process of transcending them. McCarthy said Changeling was one of Eastwood's most vividly realized films, noting Stern's cinematography, the set and costume design, and CGI landscapes that merged seamlessly with location shots. Dargis was not impressed by the production design; she cited the loss of Eastwood's regular collaborator Henry Bumstead—who died in 2006—as a factor in Changelings "overly pristine" look.
Damon Wise of Empire
called Changeling "flawless", and McCarthy said it was "emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed". He stated that Changeling was a more complex and wide-ranging work than Eastwood's Mystic River, saying the characters and social commentary were brought into the story with an "almost breathtaking deliberation". He said that as "a sorrowful critique of the city's political culture", Changeling sat in the company of films such as Chinatown and L.A. Confidential
. Honeycutt said the film added a "forgotten chapter to the L.A. noir" of those films, and that Eastwood's melodic score contributed to an evocation of a city and a period "undergoing galvanic changes". Honeycutt said, "[the] small-town feel to the street and sets ... captures a society resistant to seeing what is really going on". Séguret said that while Changeling had few defects, it was mystifying that other critics had such effusive praise for it. Denby said it was beautifully made, but that it shared the chief fault of other "righteously indignant" films in congratulating the audience for feeling contempt for the "long-discredited" attitudes depicted. Ansen concluded that the story was told in such a sure manner that only a hardened cynic would be left unmoved by the "haunting, sorrowful saga".
named Changeling one of the 10 best films of 2008, as did the International Press Academy
, which presents the annual Satellite Awards. Several critics included the film on their lists of the top 10 best films of 2008. Anthony Lane
of The New Yorker
named it second best, Empire
magazine named it fourth best, and Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald
named it joint fourth best with Eastwood's Gran Torino.
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
and written by J. Michael Straczynski
J. Michael Straczynski
Joseph Michael Straczynski , known professionally as J. Michael Straczynski and informally as Joe Straczynski or JMS, is an American writer and television producer. He works in films, television series, novels, short stories, comic books, and radio dramas. He is a playwright, a former journalist,...
. Based on real-life events in 1928 Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, the film stars Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the...
as a woman who is reunited with her missing son—only to realize he is an impostor. She confronts the city authorities, who vilify her as an unfit mother and brand her delusional. The dramatized incident was connected to the "Wineville Chicken Coop" kidnapping and murder case. Changeling explores female disempowerment, political corruption, child endangerment and the repercussions of violence. Ron Howard
Ron Howard
Ronald William "Ron" Howard is an American actor, director, and producer. He came to prominence as a child actor, playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years...
intended to direct, but scheduling conflicts led to his replacement by Eastwood. Howard and Imagine Entertainment
Imagine Entertainment
Imagine Entertainment is a film and television production company founded in 1986 by director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer.Its productions include the television series 24 and Arrested Development and the films Apollo 13 , A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code .-Organization:Karen...
partner Brian Grazer
Brian Grazer
Brian Thomas Grazer is an Academy Award-winning American film and television producer who co-founded Imagine Entertainment in 1986 with Ron Howard. Together they have produced many acclaimed films, including Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind .- Career :Brian Grazer began his career as a producer...
produced, alongside Malpaso Productions
Malpaso Productions
Malpaso Productions, originally known as The Malpaso Company, is Clint Eastwood's production company. It was established in 1967 by Eastwood's financial adviser Irving Leonard for the film Hang 'Em High, using finances from the Dollars trilogy...
' Robert Lorenz
Robert Lorenz
Robert Lorenz is a producer, best known for his collaborations with Clint Eastwood. He has produced Mystic River , Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima with Eastwood...
and Eastwood. Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
financed and distributed the film.
After hearing about the case from a contact at Los Angeles City Hall, Straczynski spent a year researching the historical record. He said he drew 95% of the script from around 6,000 pages of documentation. The shooting script
Shooting script
A shooting script is the version of a screenplay used during the production of a motion picture. Shooting scripts are distinct from spec scripts in that they make use of scene numbers , and they follow a well defined set of procedures specifying how script revisions should be implemented and...
was Straczynski's first draft and his first produced film screenplay. Several actors campaigned for the lead; Eastwood cast Jolie partly because he felt her face fit the period setting. The film also stars Jeffrey Donovan
Jeffrey Donovan
Jeffrey Donovan is an American television, film and stage actor. He plays the lead Michael Westen on the American cable television series, Burn Notice. Notable starring roles in film include: Hitch, Believe in Me, Changeling, and Come Early Morning. He portrayed Robert F. Kennedy in Clint...
, Jason Butler Harner
Jason Butler Harner
Jason Thomas Butler Harner is an American actor.-Biography:Harner was born in Elmira, New York and grew up in suburban Northern Virginia, where he had the opportunity of seeing a handful of plays at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage. His middle name Butler is his mother’s maiden name. He graduated...
, John Malkovich
John Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...
, Michael Kelly
Michael Kelly (American actor)
Michael Joseph Kelly is an American actor.-Early life:Kelly was born in Philadelphia and raised in Lawrenceville, Georgia, the son of Maureen and Michael Kelly. He has one brother and two sisters . He graduated from Brookwood High School in Snellville, Georgia...
, and Amy Ryan
Amy Ryan
Amy Ryan is an American actress. She has been nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for her performance in Gone Baby Gone and is also known for her roles in the HBO series The Wire, playing Port Authority Officer Beadie Russell; In Treatment, playing psychiatrist Adele Brousse; and The...
. Most of the characters were based on real life people, while some were composites
Composite character
A composite character is a character composed of two or more individuals, appearing in a fictional or non-fictional work. Two fictional characters are often combined into one upon adaptation of a work from one medium to another, as in the film adaptation of a novel...
. Principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
began on October 15, 2007, and concluded in ; filming took place in Los Angeles and throughout Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
. Eastwood's low-key direction led actors and crew to note the calmness of the set and the short working days. In post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
, scenes were supplemented with computer-generated skylines, backgrounds, vehicles and people.
Changeling premiered at the 61st Cannes Film Festival
2008 Cannes Film Festival
The 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 14 to May 25, 2008. In addition to films selected for competition this year, major Hollywood productions such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Kung Fu Panda had their world premieres at the festival.The British press...
on May 20, 2008, to critical acclaim. Further festival appearances preceded a limited release in the United States on October 24, 2008. The film opened wide in North America on October 31, 2008, in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2008, and in Australia on February 5, 2009. Critical reaction was more mixed than at Cannes; the acting and story were generally praised, while criticism focused on the film's conventional staging and lack of nuance. It earned in box office revenue worldwide, of which $35.7 million was earned in the United States and Canada. Changeling received nominations in three Academy Award and eight BAFTA Award
British Academy Film Awards
The British Academy Film Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . It is the British counterpart of the Oscars. As of 2008, it has taken place in the Royal Opera House, having taken over from the flagship Odeon cinema on Leicester Square...
categories.
Plot
In 1928 Los Angeles, single mother Christine Collins (JolieAngelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the...
) returns home late from work to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter (Griffith
Gattlin Griffith
Gattlin Tadd Griffith is an American child actor, best known for portraying Walter Collins in the 2008 film Changeling. He also had episodic roles on TV series such as Supernatural.Griffith was born to Tad and Wendy Griffith...
), is missing. Reverend Gustav Briegleb (Malkovich) publicizes Christine's plight and rails against the Los Angeles Police Department
Los Angeles Police Department
The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...
(LAPD) for its incompetence, corruption and the extrajudicial punishment
Extrajudicial punishment
Extrajudicial punishment is punishment by the state or some other official authority without the permission of a court or legal authority. The existence of extrajudicial punishment is considered proof that some governments will break their own legal code if deemed necessary.-Nature:Extrajudicial...
meted out by its "Gun Squad", led by Chief James E. Davis
James E. Davis (police)
James Edgar Davis was Chief of Police of the City of Los Angeles Police Department from 1926–1931 and from 1933-1939. During his first term as Police Chief, Davis emphasized firearms training. Under Davis, the L.A.P.D. developed its lasting reputation as an organization that relied on brute force...
(Colm Feore
Colm Feore
Colm Feore is an American-born Canadian stage, film and television actor.-Early life:Feore was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Irish parents who lived in Ireland for several years during Feore's early life. The family subsequently moved to Windsor, Ontario, where Feore grew up.After graduating...
). Several months after Walter's disappearance, the LAPD tells Christine that he has been found alive. Believing the positive publicity will negate recent criticism of the department, the LAPD organizes a public reunion. Although "Walter" (Devon Conti) claims he is Christine's son, she says he is not. Captain J. J. Jones (Donovan), the head of the LAPD's Juvenile Division, insists the boy is Walter and pressures Christine into taking him home "on a trial basis".
After Christine confronts Jones with physical discrepancies between "Walter" and her son, Jones arranges for a medical doctor to visit her. He tells Christine that "Walter" is shorter than before his disappearance because trauma has shrunk his spine, and that the man who took Walter had him circumcised. A newspaper prints a story that implies Christine is an unfit mother; Briegleb tells Christine it was planted by police to discredit her. Walter's teacher and dentist give Christine signed letters confirming "Walter" is an impostor. Christine tells her story to the press; as a result, Jones sends her to Los Angeles County Hospital
Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center
Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, also known as County/USC, by the abbreviation LAC+USC, or by the name Los Angeles County General, is a 600-bed public teaching hospital located in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, California...
's "psychopathic ward". She befriends inmate Carol Dexter (Ryan), who tells Christine she is one of several women who were sent there for challenging police authority. Dr. Steele (Denis O'Hare
Denis O'Hare
Denis O'Hare is an American actor noted for his award winning performances in Take Me Out and Sweet Charity as well as the HBO television show True Blood. He is also known for his supporting roles in the films Charlie Wilson's War and Milk...
) deems Christine delusional and forces her to take mood-regulating pills. Steele says he will release Christine if she admits she was mistaken about "Walter"; she refuses.
Detective Ybarra (Kelly) travels to a ranch in Wineville
Mira Loma, California
Mira Loma was a census-designated place in Riverside County, California, United States. The population was 21,930 at the 2010 census, up from 17,617 at the 2000 census. Mira Loma was known as Wineville prior to 1930. The name was changed that year to help disassociate the community from the...
, Riverside County
Riverside County, California
Riverside County is a county in the U.S. state of California. One of 58 California counties, it covers in the southern part of the state, and stretches from Orange County to the Colorado River, which forms the state border with Arizona. The county derives its name from the city of Riverside,...
, to arrange the deportation of 15-year-old Sanford Clark to Canada. The boy's uncle, Gordon Northcott (Harner), has fled after Ybarra unwittingly alerted him to his visit. Clark tells Ybarra that Northcott forced him to help kidnap and murder around 20 boys and identifies Walter as one of them. Jones tells Briegleb that Christine is in protective custody following a mental breakdown. Jones orders Clark's deportation, but Ybarra makes Clark reveal the murder site. Briegleb secures Christine's release by showing Steele a newspaper story about the Wineville killings that names Walter as a possible victim. "Walter" reveals his motive was to secure transport to Los Angeles to see his favorite actor, Tom Mix
Tom Mix
Thomas Edwin "Tom" Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features...
, and says the police told him to lie about being Christine's son. The RCMP
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , literally ‘Royal Gendarmerie of Canada’; colloquially known as The Mounties, and internally as ‘The Force’) is the national police force of Canada, and one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. It is unique in the world as a national, federal,...
capture Northcott in Vancouver, Canada. Christine's attorney (Pierson) secures a court order for the release of the other unfairly imprisoned women.
On the day of the city council's hearing into the case, Christine and Briegleb arrive at Los Angeles City Hall, where they encounter thousands of protesters demanding answers from the city. The hearing is intercut with scenes from Northcott's trial. The council concludes that Jones and Davis should be removed from duty, and that extrajudicial internments by police must be reviewed. Northcott's jury finds him guilty of murder and the judge sentences him to death by hanging. Two years later, Christine has not given up her search for Walter. Northcott sends her a message saying he is willing to tell her what happened to Walter on condition that Christine meet him before his execution. She visits Northcott, but he refuses to tell her if he killed her son. Northcott is executed the next day.
In 1935, David Clay—one of the boys assumed to have been killed—is found alive. He reveals that one of the boys with whom he was imprisoned was Walter, who courageously came back to help David get through the barbed wires. David, Walter and two other boys escaped, but were separated. David does not know whether Walter was recaptured, giving Christine hope he is alive.
Historical context
In 1926, 13-year-old Sanford Clark was taken from his home in SaskatchewanSaskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
, Canada (with the permission of his mother and reluctant father) by his uncle, Gordon Stewart Northcott. Northcott took Clark to a ranch in Wineville, California, where he regularly beat and sexually abused the boy—until , when the police took Clark into custody after a family member informed them of the situation. Clark revealed that he was forced to help Northcott and his mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, in killing three young boys after Northcott had kidnapped and molested them. The police found no bodies at the ranch—Clark said they were dumped in the desert—but discovered body parts, blood-stained axes, and personal effects belonging to missing children. The Northcotts fled to Canada, but were arrested and extradited to the United States. Sarah Louise initially confessed to the murders, including that of Walter Collins. She later retracted her statement; Gordon, who had confessed to killing five boys, did likewise.
After Christine Collins was released from Los Angeles County Hospital, she sued the police department twice, winning the second lawsuit. Although Captain Jones was ordered to pay Collins $10,800, he never did. A city council welfare hearing recommended that Jones and Chief of Police James E. Davis
James E. Davis (police)
James Edgar Davis was Chief of Police of the City of Los Angeles Police Department from 1926–1931 and from 1933-1939. During his first term as Police Chief, Davis emphasized firearms training. Under Davis, the L.A.P.D. developed its lasting reputation as an organization that relied on brute force...
leave their posts, but both were later reinstated. The California State Legislature
California State Legislature
The California State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of California. It is a bicameral body consisting of the lower house, the California State Assembly, with 80 members, and the upper house, the California State Senate, with 40 members...
later made it illegal for the police to commit someone to a psychiatric facility without a warrant. Northcott was convicted of the murders of Lewis Winslow (12), Nelson Winslow (10) and an unidentified Mexican boy; after his conviction, Northcott was reported to have admitted to up to 20 murders, though he later denied the claim. Northcott was executed by hanging in 1930. Sarah Louise was convicted of Walter Collins' murder and served almost 12 years in prison. In 1930, the residents of Wineville changed the town's name to Mira Loma to escape the notoriety brought by the case.
Development
Several years before writing Changeling, television screenwriter and former journalist J. Michael StraczynskiJ. Michael Straczynski
Joseph Michael Straczynski , known professionally as J. Michael Straczynski and informally as Joe Straczynski or JMS, is an American writer and television producer. He works in films, television series, novels, short stories, comic books, and radio dramas. He is a playwright, a former journalist,...
was contacted by a source at Los Angeles City Hall
Los Angeles City Hall
Los Angeles City Hall, completed 1928, is the center of the government of the city of Los Angeles, California, and houses the mayor's office and the meeting chambers and offices of the Los Angeles City Council...
. The source told him that officials were planning to burn numerous archive documents, among them "something [Straczynski] should see". The source had discovered a transcript of the city council welfare hearings concerning Collins and the aftermath of her son's disappearance. Straczynski became fascinated with the case; he carried out some research, and wrote a spec script
Spec script
A spec script, also known as a speculative screenplay, is a non-commissioned unsolicited screenplay. It is usually written by a screenwriter who hopes to have the script optioned and eventually purchased by a producer, production company, or studio....
titled The Strange Case of Christine Collins. Several studios and independent producers optioned the script, but it never found a buyer. Straczynski felt he lacked the time to devote to making the story work and only returned to the project following the cancellation of his television show Jeremiah
Jeremiah (TV series)
Jeremiah is an American television series starring Luke Perry and Malcolm-Jamal Warner that ran on the Showtime network from 2002 to 2004. The series takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where most of the adult population has been wiped out by a deadly virus.Developed by Babylon 5 creator J...
in 2004. After 20 years as a screenwriter and producer for television, Straczynski felt he needed a break from the medium, so he spent a year researching the Collins case through archived criminal, county courthouse, city hall and city morgue records. He said he collected around 6,000 pages of documentation on Collins and the Wineville murders, before learning enough to "figure out how to tell it". He wrote the first draft of the new script in 11 days. Straczynski's agent passed the script to producer Jim Whitaker
Jim whitaker
Norris J. "Jim" Whitaker is an American politician of the Republican Party who served as mayor of Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska, from 2003 to 2009. Prior to his mayoral term, Whitaker served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1999 to 2003. In October 2003 he was elected borough...
. He forwarded it to Ron Howard
Ron Howard
Ronald William "Ron" Howard is an American actor, director, and producer. He came to prominence as a child actor, playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years...
, who optioned it immediately.
In June 2006, Universal Studios and Howard's Imagine Entertainment bought the script for Howard to direct. The film was on a shortlist of projects for Howard after coming off the commercial success of The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code (film)
The Da Vinci Code is a 2006 American mystery thriller film directed by Ron Howard. The screenplay was written by Akiva Goldsman and based on Dan Brown's worldwide bestselling 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code...
. In , Universal fast tracked the production. When Howard chose Frost/Nixon
Frost/Nixon (film)
Frost/Nixon is a 2008 historical drama film based on the 2006 play by Peter Morgan which dramatizes the Frost/Nixon interviews of 1977. The film was directed by Ron Howard and produced for Universal Pictures by Howard, Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment and Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner of Working...
and Angels & Demons as his next two directing projects, it became clear he could not direct Changeling until 2009. After Howard stepped down, it looked as if the film would not be made, despite admiration for the script in the industry. Howard and Imagine partner Brian Grazer
Brian Grazer
Brian Thomas Grazer is an Academy Award-winning American film and television producer who co-founded Imagine Entertainment in 1986 with Ron Howard. Together they have produced many acclaimed films, including Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind .- Career :Brian Grazer began his career as a producer...
began looking for a new director to helm the project; they pitched the film to Eastwood in , and he agreed to direct immediately after reading the script. Eastwood said his memories of growing up during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
meant that whenever a project dealing with the era landed in his hands, he "redoubled his attention" upon it. Eastwood also cited the script's focus on Collins—rather than the "Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger
Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is a fictional, horrifying character from the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. He first appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street as a disfigured dream stalker who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams,...
" story of Northcott's crimes—as a factor in deciding to make the film.
Writing
Straczynski viewed "sitting down and ferreting out [the] story" as a return to his journalistic roots. He also drew on his experience writing crime drama for the proceduralPolice procedural
The police procedural is a subgenre of detective fiction which attempts to convincingly depict the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes. While traditional detective novels usually concentrate on a single crime, police procedurals frequently depict investigations into several...
elements of the plot. Straczynski said he had gathered so much information about the case that it was difficult to work out how to tell it. To let the story develop at its own pace, he put the project aside to allow himself to forget the less essential elements and bring into focus the parts he wanted to tell. He described what he saw as two overlaid triangles: "the first triangle, with the point up, is Collins' story. You start with her, and her story gets broader and broader and begins having impact from all kinds of places. The overlay on that was an upside down triangle with the base on top, which is the panorama of Los Angeles at that time—1928. And it begins getting narrower and narrower toward the bottom, bearing down on her." Once Straczynski saw this structure, he felt he could write the story. He chose to avoid focusing on the atrocities of the Wineville murders in favor of telling the story from Collins' perspective; Straczynski said she was the only person in the story without a hidden agenda, and it was her tenacity—as well as the legacy the case left throughout California's legal system—that had attracted him to the project. He said, "My intention was very simple: to honor what Christine Collins did."
With Collins as the inspiration, Straczynski said he was left with a strong desire "to get it right"; he approached it more like "an article for cinema" than a regular film. He stuck close to the historical record because he felt the story was bizarre enough that adding too many fictional elements would call into question its integrity. Straczynski claimed that 95% of the script's content came from the historical record; he said there were only two moments at which he had to "figure out what happened", due to the lack of information in the records. One was the sequence set in the psychopathic ward, for which there was only limited after-the-fact testimony. Straczynski originally wrote a shorter account of Collins' incarceration. His agent suggested the sequence needed development, so Straczynski extrapolated events based on standard practice in such institutions at the time. It was at this stage he created composite character Carol Dexter, who was intended to symbolize the women of the era who had been unjustly committed. Straczynski cited his academic background, including majors
Academic major
In the United States and Canada, an academic major or major concentration is the academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits....
in psychology and sociology, as beneficial to writing the scenes, specifically one in which Steele distorts Collins' words to make her appear delusional. Straczynski worked at making the dialogue authentic, while avoiding an archaic tone. He cited his experience imagining alien psyches when writing Babylon 5
Babylon 5
Babylon 5 is an American science fiction television series created, produced and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. The show centers on a space station named Babylon 5: a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and conflict during the years 2257–2262...
as good practice for putting himself in the cultural mindset of the 1920s.
Straczynski described specific visual cues in the screenplay, such as in Sanford Clark's confession scene. Clark's flashback to a falling axe is juxtaposed with the crumbling ash from Detective Ybarra's cigarette. The image served two purposes: it was an aesthetic correlation between the axe and the cigarette, and it suggested that Ybarra was so shocked by Clark's confession that he had not moved or even smoked in the 10 minutes Clark took to tell his story. As with most of the cues, Eastwood shot the scene as written. To ensure the veracity of the story, Straczynski incorporated quotes from the historical record, including court testimony, into the dialogue. He also included photocopies of news clippings every 15–20 pages in the script to remind people the story was a true one. So the credits could present the film as "a true story" rather than as "based on" one, Straczynski went through the script with Universal's legal department, providing attribution for every scene. Straczynski believed the only research error he made was in a scene that referenced Scrabble
Scrabble
Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...
, pre-dating its appearance on the market by two years. He changed the reference to a crossword puzzle. He did not alter the shooting script
Shooting script
A shooting script is the version of a screenplay used during the production of a motion picture. Shooting scripts are distinct from spec scripts in that they make use of scene numbers , and they follow a well defined set of procedures specifying how script revisions should be implemented and...
any further from his first draft; though Straczynski had written two more drafts for Howard, Eastwood insisted the first draft be filmed as he felt it had the clearest voice of the three. Straczynski said, "Clint's funny—if he likes it, he'll do it, that's the end of the discussion. When I met with him to ask, 'Do you want any changes, do you want any things cut, added to, subtracted from, whatever,' he said, 'No. The draft is fine. Let's shoot the draft.
Among the changes Straczynski made from the historical record was to omit Northcott's mother—who participated in the murders—from the story. He also depicted Northcott's trial as taking place in Los Angeles, though it was held in Riverside
Riverside, California
Riverside is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, and the county seat of the eponymous county. Named for its location beside the Santa Ana River, it is the largest city in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan area of Southern California, 4th largest inland California...
. The title is derived from Western European folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and refers to a creature—a "changeling
Changeling
A changeling is a creature found in Western European folklore and folk religion. It is typically described as being the offspring of a fairy, troll, elf or other legendary creature that has been secretly left in the place of a human child. Sometimes the term is also used to refer to the child who...
"—left by fairies in place of a human child. Due to the word's association with the supernatural, Straczynski intended it only as a temporary title, believing he would be able to change it later on.
Casting
Composite character
A composite character is a character composed of two or more individuals, appearing in a fictional or non-fictional work. Two fictional characters are often combined into one upon adaptation of a work from one medium to another, as in the film adaptation of a novel...
of people and types of people from the era. Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the...
plays Christine Collins ; five actors campaigned for the role, including Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon
Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon , better known as Reese Witherspoon, is an American actress and film producer. Witherspoon landed her first feature role as the female lead in the film The Man in the Moon in 1991; later that year she made her television acting debut, in the cable movie Wildflower...
and Hilary Swank
Hilary Swank
Hilary Ann Swank is an American actress. Swank's film career began with a small part in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then a major part in The Next Karate Kid , as Julie Pierce, the first female protégé of sensei Mr. Miyagi...
. Howard and Grazer suggested Jolie; Eastwood agreed, believing that her face fit the period setting. Jolie joined the production in . She was initially reluctant because, as a mother, she found the subject matter distressing. She said she was persuaded by Eastwood's involvement, and the screenplay's depiction of Collins as someone who recovered from adversity and had the strength to fight the odds. Jolie found playing Collins very emotional. She said the most difficult part was relating to the character, because Collins was relatively passive. Jolie ultimately based her performance on her own mother, who died in 2007. For scenes at the telephone exchange, Jolie learned to roller skate in high heels, a documented practice of the period.
Jeffrey Donovan
Jeffrey Donovan
Jeffrey Donovan is an American television, film and stage actor. He plays the lead Michael Westen on the American cable television series, Burn Notice. Notable starring roles in film include: Hitch, Believe in Me, Changeling, and Come Early Morning. He portrayed Robert F. Kennedy in Clint...
portrays Captain J.J. Jones, a character Donovan became fascinated with because of the power Jones wielded in the city. The character quotes the real Jones' public statements throughout the film, including the scene in which he has Collins committed. Donovan's decision to play Jones with a slight Irish accent was his own. John Malkovich
John Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...
joined the production in as Reverend Gustav Briegleb. Eastwood cast Malkovich against type
Typecasting (acting)
In TV, film, and theatre, typecasting is the process by which a particular actor becomes strongly identified with a specific character; one or more particular roles; or, characters having the same traits or coming from the same social or ethnic groups...
as he felt this would bring "a different shading" to the character. Jason Butler Harner
Jason Butler Harner
Jason Thomas Butler Harner is an American actor.-Biography:Harner was born in Elmira, New York and grew up in suburban Northern Virginia, where he had the opportunity of seeing a handful of plays at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage. His middle name Butler is his mother’s maiden name. He graduated...
plays Gordon Northcott, whom Harner described as "a horrible, horrible, wonderful person". He said Northcott believes he shares a connection with Collins due to their both being in the headlines: "In his eyes, they're kindred spirits." Harner landed the role after one taped audition. Casting director Ellen Chenoweth explained that Eastwood chose Harner over more well-known actors who wanted the part because Harner displayed "more depth and variety" and was able to project "a slight craziness" without evoking Charles Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
. Eastwood was surprised by the resemblance between Northcott and Harner, saying they looked "very much" alike when Harner was in makeup.
As Harner did for the Northcott role, Amy Ryan
Amy Ryan
Amy Ryan is an American actress. She has been nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for her performance in Gone Baby Gone and is also known for her roles in the HBO series The Wire, playing Port Authority Officer Beadie Russell; In Treatment, playing psychiatrist Adele Brousse; and The...
auditioned via tape for the role of Carol Dexter. She cited the filming of a fight scene during which Eastwood showed her "how to throw a movie punch" as her favorite moment of the production. Michael Kelly
Michael Kelly (American actor)
Michael Joseph Kelly is an American actor.-Early life:Kelly was born in Philadelphia and raised in Lawrenceville, Georgia, the son of Maureen and Michael Kelly. He has one brother and two sisters . He graduated from Brookwood High School in Snellville, Georgia...
portrays Detective Lester Ybarra, who is a composite of several people from the historical record. Kelly was chosen based on a taped audition; he worked around scheduling conflicts with the television series Generation Kill
Generation Kill (TV series)
Generation Kill is a 2008 HBO television miniseries based on the book of the same name by Evan Wright about his experience as an embedded reporter with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was adapted for television by David Simon,...
, which he was filming in Africa at the same time. Geoff Pierson
Geoff Pierson
Geoff Pierson is an American actor known for his role on The WB series Unhappily Ever After as Jack Malloy, the father of a dysfunctional family whose best friend is a stuffed animal rabbit named Mr. Floppy...
plays Sammy Hahn, a defense attorney known for taking high-profile cases. He represents Collins and in doing so plants the seeds for overturning "Code 12" internments, used by police to jail or commit those deemed difficult or an inconvenience. Code 12 was often used to commit women without due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
. Colm Feore
Colm Feore
Colm Feore is an American-born Canadian stage, film and television actor.-Early life:Feore was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Irish parents who lived in Ireland for several years during Feore's early life. The family subsequently moved to Windsor, Ontario, where Feore grew up.After graduating...
portrays Chief of Police James E. Davis, whose backstory was changed from that of his historical counterpart. Reed Birney plays Mayor George E. Cryer
George Edward Cryer
George Edward Cryer was an American lawyer and politician. A Republican, Cryer served as the 32nd Mayor of Los Angeles from 1921 to 1929, a period of rapid growth in the city's population. During his administration, the Los Angeles City Hall and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum were built, and the...
; Denis O'Hare
Denis O'Hare
Denis O'Hare is an American actor noted for his award winning performances in Take Me Out and Sweet Charity as well as the HBO television show True Blood. He is also known for his supporting roles in the films Charlie Wilson's War and Milk...
plays composite character Doctor Jonathan Steele; Gattlin Griffith
Gattlin Griffith
Gattlin Tadd Griffith is an American child actor, best known for portraying Walter Collins in the 2008 film Changeling. He also had episodic roles on TV series such as Supernatural.Griffith was born to Tad and Wendy Griffith...
plays Walter Collins, and Devon Conti plays his supplanter, Arthur Hutchins. Eddie Alderson
Eddie Alderson
-Life and career:Eddie Alderson was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to Rich and Kathy Alderson.Alderson has portrayed Matthew Buchanan on ABC's One Life to Live since May 10, 2001. He was put on contract with the OLTL series in December 2008...
plays Northcott's nephew and accomplice, Sanford Clark.
Locations and design
Location scouting
Location scouting is a vital process in the pre-production stage of filmmaking and commercial photography. Once scriptwriters, producers or directors have decided what general kind of scenery they require for the various parts of their work that is shot outside of the studio, the search for a...
revealed that many of the older buildings in Los Angeles had been torn down, including the entire neighborhood where Collins lived. Suburban areas in San Dimas
San Dimas, California
San Dimas is a city located in the San Gabriel Valley, in Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 33,371. The city historically took its name from San Dismas Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains above the northern section of present day San Dimas...
, San Bernardino
San Bernardino, California
San Bernardino is a city located in the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area , and serves as the county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States...
and Pasadena
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
doubled for 1920s Los Angeles instead. The Old Town district of San Dimas stood in for Collins' neighborhood and some adjacent locales. Murakami said Old Town was chosen because very little had changed since the 1920s. It was used for interiors and exteriors; the crew decorated the area with a subdued color palette to evoke feelings of comfort. For some exterior shots they renovated derelict properties in neighborhoods of Los Angeles that still possessed 1920s architecture. The crew converted the third floor of the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles into a replica of the 1920s Los Angeles City Council
Los Angeles City Council
The Los Angeles City Council is the governing body of the City of Los Angeles.The Council is composed of fifteen members elected from single-member districts for four-year terms. The president of the council and the president pro tempore are chosen by the Council at the first regular meeting after...
chambers.
The 1918 Santa Fe Depot in San Bernardino doubled for the site of Collins' reunion with "Walter". The production filmed scenes set at San Quentin
San Quentin, California
San Quentin is a small unincorporated community in Marin County, California. It is located west of Point San Quentin, at an elevation of 30 feet ....
in the community. A small farm on the outskirts of Lancaster, California
Lancaster, California
Lancaster is a charter city in northern Los Angeles County, in the high desert, near the Kern County line. Lancaster currently ranks as the 30th largest city in California, and the 148th largest city in the United States. Lancaster is the principal city within the Antelope Valley...
, stood in for the Wineville chicken ranch. The crew recreated the entire ranch, referencing archive newspaper photographs and visits to the original ranch to get a feel for the topography and layout. Steve Lech, president of the Riverside Historical Society, was employed as a consultant and accompanied the crew on its visits.
The production sourced around 150 vintage motor cars, dating from 1918 to 1928, from collectors throughout Southern California. In some cases the cars were in too good a condition, so the crew modified them to make the cars appear like they were in everyday use; they sprayed dust and water onto the bodywork, and to "age" some of the cars they applied a coating that simulated rust and scratches. The visual effects team retouched shots of Los Angeles City Hall—on which construction was completed in 1928—to remove weathering and newer surrounding architecture. Costume designer Deborah Hopper
Deborah Hopper
Deborah Ann Hopper is a costume designer who has collaborated with Clint Eastwood on 16 films over the last 20 years.-Biography:Hopper started her career as a costume designer for opera and ballet productions. She has been working in film since 1983....
researched old Sears department store
Sears, Roebuck and Company
Sears, officially named Sears, Roebuck and Co., is an American chain of department stores which was founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in the late 19th century...
catalogs, back issues of Life magazine
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
, and high-school yearbooks to ensure the costumes were historically accurate. Hopper sourced 1920s clothing for up to 1,000 people; this was difficult because the fabrics of the period were not resilient. She found sharp wool suits for the police officers. The style for women of all classes was to dress to create a demure silhouette, using dropped waist
Waistline (clothing)
The waistline is the line of demarcation between the upper and lower portions of a garment, which notionally corresponds to the natural waist but may vary with fashion from just below the bust to below the hips. The waistline of a garment is often used to accentuate different features...
dresses, cloche hat
Cloche hat
The cloche hat is a fitted, bell-shaped hat for women that was invented by milliner Caroline Reboux in 1908, became especially popular during the 1920s, and continued to be commonly seen until about 1933. Cloche is the French word for "bell"....
s that complemented bob cut
Bob cut
A "bob cut" is a short haircut for women in which the hair is typically cut straight around the head at about jaw-level, often with a fringe at the front.-The beginning:...
hairstyles, fur-trimmed coats and knitted gloves. Jolie said the costumes Collins wore formed an integral part of her approach to the character. Hopper consulted historians and researched archive footage of Collins to replicate her look. Hopper dressed Jolie in austere grays and browns with knitted gloves, wool serge
Serge
Serge is a type of twill fabric that has diagonal lines or ridges on both sides, made with a two-up, two-down weave. The worsted variety is used in making military uniforms, suits, great coats and trench coats. Its counterpart, silk serge, is used for linings. French serge is a softer, finer variety...
skirts accompanying cotton blouses, Mary Jane shoes
Mary Jane (shoe)
Mary Jane is an American term for a strap shoe or bar shoe that typically has low heels, broad and rounded closed toes, and a single-buckle strap across the instep and/or around the ankle...
, crocheted corsages
Corsage (bodice)
Corsage refers to the bodice of a dress. In the 19th century, corsage was a common term for a woman's bodice or jacket.In modern usage, corsage is often confused with a corset, but a corset is tighter...
and Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
jewelry. In the 1930s sequences at the end of the film, Jolie's costumes become more shapely and feminine, with a decorative stitching around the waistline that was popular to the era.
Principal photography
Principal photographyPrincipal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
began on October 15, 2007, finishing two days ahead of its 45-day schedule on December 14, 2007. Universal Pictures provided a budget of $55 million. The film was Eastwood's first for a studio other than Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
since Absolute Power
Absolute Power (film)
Absolute Power is a 1997 American political thriller produced, directed by, and starring Clint Eastwood as a thief who witnesses a murder. The screenplay by William Goldman is based on the 1996 novel of the same name written by David Baldacci...
(1997). Filming mainly took place on the Universal Studios backlot
Backlot
A backlot is an area behind or adjoining a movie studio, containing permanent exterior buildings for outdoor scenes in filmmaking or television productions, or space for temporary set construction....
in Los Angeles. The backlot's New York Street and Tenement Street depicted downtown
Downtown
Downtown is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's core or central business district ....
Los Angeles. Tenement Street also stood in for the exterior of Northcott's sister's Vancouver apartment; visual effects added the city to the background. The production also used the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
, California. Eastwood had clear childhood memories of 1930s Los Angeles and attempted to recreate several details in the film: the town hall, at the time one of the tallest buildings in the city; the city center, which was one of the busiest in the world; and the "perfectly functioning" Pacific Electric Railway
Pacific Electric Railway
The Pacific Electric Railway , also known as the Red Car system, was a mass transit system in Southern California using streetcars, light rail, and buses...
, the distinctive red streetcars of which feature closely in two scenes. The production used two functioning replica streetcars for these shots, with visual effects employed for streetcars in the background.
Eastwood is known for his economical film shoots; his regular camera operator, Steve Campanelli, indicated the rapid pace at which Eastwood films—and his intimate, near-wordless direction—also featured during Changelings shoot. Eastwood limited rehearsals and takes
Takes
Takes is the third studio album by British singer/songwriter Adem. It is a covers album, consisting primarily of covers of 90s pop/alternative tracks.-Track listing:...
to garner more authentic performances. Jolie said, "You've got to get your stuff together and get ready because he doesn't linger ... He expects people to come prepared and get on with their work." Campanelli sometimes had to tell Jolie what Eastwood wanted from a scene, as Eastwood talked too softly. To provide verisimilitude
Verisimilitude
Verisimilitude is the quality of realism in something .-Competing ideas:The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer to the truth than another false theory...
to certain scenes, Eastwood sometimes asked Jolie to play them quietly, as if just for him. At the same time he would ask his camera operator to start filming discreetly, without Jolie's seeing it. Malkovich noted Eastwood's direction as "redefining economical", saying Eastwood was quiet and did not use the phrases "action" and "cut". He said, "Some [directors]—like Clint Eastwood or Woody Allen—don't really like to be tortured by a million questions. They hire you, and they figure you know what to do, and you should do it ... And that's fine by me." Ryan also noted the calmness of the set, observing that her experiences working with director Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
on 100 Centre Street and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a 2007 crime drama directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Kelly Masterson. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney. The title comes from the Irish saying: "May you be in heaven a full half-hour before the devil knows...
were useful due to his sharing Eastwood's preference for filming a small number of takes. Donovan said Eastwood seldom gave him direction other than to "go ahead", and that Eastwood did not even comment on his decision to play Jones with a slight Irish accent: "Actors are insecure and they want praise, but he's not there to praise you or make you feel better ... All he's there to do is tell the story, and he hired actors to tell their story." Gaffer
Gaffer (filmmaking)
A gaffer in the motion picture industry and on a television crew is an electrician that can be head of the electrical department, responsible for the execution of the lighting plan for a production. Gaffer, outside of the motion picture industry, is a traditional British English word for an older...
Ross Dunkerley said he often had to work on a scene without having seen a rehearsal: "Chances are we'll talk about it for a minute or two, and then we're executing it."
The original edit was almost three hours long; to hone it to 141 minutes, Eastwood cut material from the first part of the film to get to Collins' story sooner. To improve the pacing he also cut scenes that focused on Reverend Briegleb. Eastwood deliberately left the ending of the film ambiguous to reflect the uncertain fates of several characters in the history. He said that while some stories aimed to finish at the end of a film, he preferred to leave it open-ended.
Cinematography
Changeling was director of photography Tom SternTom Stern (cinematographer)
Thomas Evans "Tom" Stern, ASC, AFC is an American cinematographer best known for his work on films directed by Clint Eastwood...
's sixth film with Eastwood. Despite the muted palette, the film is more colorful than some previous Stern–Eastwood collaborations. Stern referenced a large book of period images. He attempted to evoke Conrad Hall
Conrad Hall
Conrad Lafcadio Hall, ASC was an American cinematographer from Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia. Named after writers Joseph Conrad and Lafcadio Hearn, he was best known for photographing films such as In Cold Blood, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, American Beauty, and Road to...
's work on Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
-set film The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust (film)
The Day of the Locust is a 1975 American drama film directed by John Schlesinger. The screenplay by Waldo Salt is based on the 1939 novel of the same title by Nathanael West...
, as well as match what he called the "leanness" of Mystic River
Mystic River (film)
Mystic River is a 2003 American drama film directed, co-produced and scored by Clint Eastwood, starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney and Emmy Rossum. The film was written by Brian Helgeland, based on Dennis Lehane's novel of the same...
s look. Stern said the challenge was to make Changeling as simple as possible to shoot. To focus more on Jolie's performance, he tended to avoid the use of fill light
Fill light
In television, film, stage, or photographic lighting, a fill light may be used to reduce the contrast of a scene and provide some illumination for the areas of the image that are in shadow...
ing. Eastwood did not want the flashbacks to Northcott's ranch to be too much like a horror film—he said the focus of the scene was the effect of the crimes on Sanford Clark—so he avoided graphic imagery in favour of casting the murders in shadow.
Stern shot Changeling in anamorphic format
Anamorphic format
Anamorphic format is a term that can be used either for: the cinematography technique of capturing a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film, or other visual recording media, with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio; or a photographic projection format in which the original image requires an...
on 35mm film
35 mm film
35 mm film is the film gauge most commonly used for chemical still photography and motion pictures. The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 35 millimeters in width...
using Kodak Vision 500T 5279 film stock. The film was shot on Panavision
Panavision
Panavision is an American motion picture equipment company specializing in cameras and lenses, based in Woodland Hills, California. Formed by Robert Gottschalk as a small partnership to create anamorphic projection lenses during the widescreen boom in the 1950s, Panavision expanded its product...
cameras and C-Series lenses. Due to the large number of sets, the lighting rigs were more extensive than on other Eastwood productions. The crew made several ceilings from bleached muslin
Muslin
Muslin |sewing patterns]], such as for clothing, curtains, or upholstery. Because air moves easily through muslin, muslin clothing is suitable for hot, dry climates.- Etymology and history :...
tiles. Stern lit the tiles from above to produce a soft, warm light that was intended to evoke the period through tones close to antique and sepia
Sepia (color)
Sepia is a dark brown-grey color, named after the rich brown pigment derived from the ink sac of the common cuttlefish Sepia.The word sepia is the Latinized form of the Greek σηπία, sēpía, cuttlefish.-Sepia in human culture:...
. The crew segregated the tiles using fire safety fabric Duvatyn to prevent light spilling onto neighboring clusters. The key light
Key light
The key light is the first and usually most important light that a photographer, cinematographer, lighting cameraman, or other scene composer will use in a lighting setup. The purpose of the key light is to highlight the form and dimension of the subject. The key light is not a rigid requirement;...
was generally softer to match the warm tones given off by the toplights. Stern used stronger skypan
Skypan
In filmmaking, a skypan is used by the director of photography for lighting scenery that lies outside a set's window or door. Skypans are circular with an upraised ridge around the outside . It is made up of a reflective white pan that has a detachable heavy-duty lamp socket rigged in front of the...
s—more intense than is commonly used for key lighting—to reduce contrasts when applying daytime rain effects, as a single light source tended to produce harder shadows.
Stern lit scenes filmed at the Park Plaza Hotel using dimmable HMI and tungsten lights rigged within balloon light
Balloon light
-Early history:Invented in the 1920s in Germany, the lighting balloon was first patented on October 26, 1924 . Until the 1990s, several patents were issued although the application was utilized very little...
s. This setup allowed him to "dial in" the color he wanted, as the blend of tones from the tungsten fixtures, wooden walls and natural daylight made it difficult to illuminate the scenes using HMIs or daylight exclusively. Stern said the period setting had little effect overall on his lighting choices because the look was mostly applied in the production design and during digital intermediate
Digital intermediate
Digital intermediate is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. It often replaces or augments the photochemical timing process and is usually the final creative adjustment to a movie...
(DI), the post-production digital manipulation of color and lighting. Technicolor Digital Intermediates
Thomson SA
Technicolor SA , formerly Thomson SA and Thomson Multimedia, is a French international provider of solutions for the creation, management, post-production, delivery and access of video, for the Communication, Media and Entertainment industries. Technicolor’s headquarters are located in Issy les...
carried out the DI. Stern supervised most of the work via e-mailed reference images as he was in Russia shooting another film at the time. He was present at the laboratory for the application of the finishing touches.
Overview
Rainmaker Digital Effects
Rainmaker, headquartered in Vancouver, Canada and maintaining an office in Los Angeles, California, is an award-winning visual effects, 3D animation and post-production company with a 28 year history in feature film, television, commercials, and games...
and Pac Title created most of the visual effects, under the overall supervision of Michael Owens. CIS' work was headed by Geoff Hancock and Pac Title's by Mark Freund. Each studio created around 90 shots. Pac Title focused primarily on 2D imagery; VICON House of Moves handled the motion capture
Motion capture
Motion capture, motion tracking, or mocap are terms used to describe the process of recording movement and translating that movement on to a digital model. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, and medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robotics...
. The effects work consisted mainly of peripheral additions: architecture, vehicles, crowds and furniture. CIS used 3D modeling package Maya
Maya (software)
Autodesk Maya , commonly shortened to Maya, is 3D computer graphics software that runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and Linux, originally developed by Alias Systems Corporation and currently owned and developed by Autodesk, Inc. It is used to create interactive 3D applications, including video...
to animate city scenes before rendering
Rendering (computer graphics)
Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model , by means of computer programs. A scene file contains objects in a strictly defined language or data structure; it would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information as a description of the virtual scene...
them in mental ray
Mental Ray
mental ray is a production-quality rendering application developed by mental images . mental images was bought in December 2007 by NVIDIA.As the name implies, it supports ray tracing to generate images....
; they generated matte painting
Matte painting
A matte painting is a painted representation of a landscape, set, or distant location that allows filmmakers to create the illusion of an environment that would otherwise be too expensive or impossible to build or visit. Historically, matte painters and film technicians have used various techniques...
s in Softimage XSI
Softimage XSI
Autodesk Softimage, or simply Softimage is a 3D computer graphics application, owned by Autodesk, for producing 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling, and computer animation...
and Maya, and used Digital Fusion
Eyeon Fusion
Fusion is an image compositing software program created by eyeon Software Inc. It is typically used to create visual effects and digital compositing for film, HD and commercials...
for some 2D shots. The team's work began with research into 1928 Los Angeles; they referenced historical photographs and data on the urban core's population density. CIS had to generate mostly new computer models, textures and motion capture because the company's existing effects catalog consisted primarily of modern era elements. CIS supplemented exteriors with skylines and detailed backdrops. They created set extensions digitally and with matte paintings. CIS created city blocks by using shared elements of period architecture that could be combined, rearranged and restacked to make buildings of different widths and heights; that way, the city could look diverse with a minimum of textural variation. CIS referenced vintage aerial photographs of downtown Los Angeles so shots would better reflect the geography of the city, as Hancock felt it important to have a consistency that would allow audiences to understand and become immersed in the environment.
To maintain the rapid shooting pace Eastwood demanded, Owens chose to mostly avoid using bluescreen
Chroma key
Chroma key compositing is a technique for compositing two images together. A color range in the top layer is made transparent, revealing another image behind. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production...
technology, as the process can be time-consuming and difficult to light. He instead used rotoscoping, the process whereby effects are drawn directly onto live action shots. Rotoscoping is more expensive than bluescreen, but the technique had proved reliable for Eastwood when he made extensive use of it on Flags of Our Fathers
Flags of Our Fathers (film)
is a 2006 American war film directed, co-produced and scored by Clint Eastwood and written by William Broyles, Jr. and Paul Haggis. It is based on the book of the same name written by James Bradley and Ron Powers about the Battle of Iwo Jima, the five Marines and one Navy Corpsman who were involved...
(2006) to avoid shooting against bluescreen on a mountaintop. For Owens, the lighting was better, and he considered rotoscoping to be "faster, easier and more natural". Owens used bluescreen in only a few locations, such as at the ends of backlot streets where it would not impact the lighting. The Universal Studios backlot had been used for so many films that Owens thought it important to disguise familiar architecture as much as possible, so some foreground and middle distance buildings were swapped. One of his favorite effects shots was a scene in which Collins exits a taxi in front of the police station. The scene was filmed almost entirely against bluescreen; only Jolie, the sidewalk
Sidewalk
A sidewalk, or pavement, footpath, footway, and sometimes platform, is a path along the side of a road. A sidewalk may accommodate moderate changes in grade and is normally separated from the vehicular section by a curb...
, the taxi cab and an extra were real. The completed shot features the full range of effects techniques used in the film: digital extras in the foreground, set extensions, and computer-generated vehicles.
Digital extras
For crowd scenes, CIS supplemented the live-action extras with digital pedestrians created using motion capture. House of Moves captured the movements of five men and four women during a two-day shoot supervised by Hancock. The motion capture performers were coached to make the "small, formal and refined" movements that Owens said reflected the general public's conduct at the time. CIS combined the motion data with the Massive software package to generate the interactions of the digital pedestrians. The use of Massive presented a challenge when it came to blending digital pedestrians with live-action extras who had to move from the foreground into the digital crowd. Massive worked well until this stage, when the effects team had to move the digital pedestrians to avoid taking the live-action extras out of the shot. To allow close-ups of individual Massive extras, the effects team focused on their faces and walking characteristics. Hancock explained, "We wanted to be able to push Massive right up to the camera and see how well it held up. In a couple of shots the characters might be 40 feet away from the camera, about 1/5 screen height. The bigger the screen is, the bigger the character. He could be 10 feet tall, so everything, even his hair, better look good!" Typically, a limited number of motion performances are captured and Massive is used to create further variety, such as in height and walking speed. Because the digital extras were required to be close to the foreground, and to integrate them properly with the live action extras, House of Moves captured twice as much motion data than CIS had used on any other project. CIS created nine distinct digital characters. To eliminate inaccuracies that develop when creating a digital extra of different proportions to the motion capture performer, CIS sent nine skeleton rigs to House of Moves before work began. This gave House of Moves time to properly adapt the rigs to its performers, resulting in motion capture data that required very little editing in Massive. CIS wrote shaderShader
In the field of computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that is used primarily to calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware with a high degree of flexibility...
s for their clothing; displacement maps
Displacement mapping
Displacement mapping is an alternative computer graphics technique in contrast to bump mapping, normal mapping, and parallax mapping, using a texture- or height map to cause an effect where the actual geometric position of points over the textured surface are displaced, often along the local...
in the air shader were linked with the motion capture to animate wrinkles in trousers and jackets.
Closing sequence
Closure (psychology)
Closure or need for closure is a popular psychology term used to describe an individual's desire for a definite cognitive closure as opposed to enduring ambiguity...
favored by its contemporaries, Changelings final sequence reflects Collins' renewed hope that Walter is alive. The shot is a two and a half minute sequence showing Collins' walking off to become lost in a crowd. The sequence is representative of the range of effects that feature throughout the film; Los Angeles is presented as major character, brought to life by unobtrusive peripheral imagery that allows the viewer to focus on the story and the emotional cues. The "hustle and bustle" of the sequence was required to convey that downtown Los Angeles in 1935 was a congested urban center. In the closing shot, the camera tilts up to reveal miles of city blocks, pedestrians on the streets, cars going by and streetcars running along their tracks. The version of the film that screened at Cannes
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
did not include this sequence; the scene faded to black as Collins walked away. The new 4,000-frame shot was Owens' idea. He felt the abrupt cut to black pulled the viewer out of the film too quickly, and that it left no room for emotional reflection. Owens said, "There is a legend at the end before the credits. The legend speaks to what happened after the fact, and I think you need to just swallow that for a few moments with the visual still with you." Owens told Eastwood the film should end like Chinatown (1974), in which the camera lifts to take in the scene: "The camera booms up and she walks away from us from a very emotional, poignant scene at the end, walks away into this mass of people and traffic. It's very hopeful and sad at the same time."
Owens did not have time to complete the shot before the Cannes screenings, but afterwards he used cineSync
CineSync
cineSync is a tool for visual communication and was developed to address the issue of remote reviews and approvals, allowing directors, producers, supervisors and visual media professionals to perform live run-throughs of work being carried out in another country, another city, or even the building...
to conduct most of the work from home. The shot includes two blocks of computer-generated buildings that recede into the distance of a downtown set extension. As Collins disappears into the crowd about a minute into the shot, the live footage is gradually joined with more digital work. The streetcars, tracks and power lines were all computer generated. Live-action extras appear for the first minute of the shot before being replaced by digital ones. The shot was made more complicated by the need to add Massive extras. Owens constructed the scene by first building the digital foreground around the live action footage. He then added the background before filling the scene with vehicles and people.
Music
Eastwood composed Changelings jazzJazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
-influenced score. Featuring lilting guitars and strings, it remains largely low-key throughout. The introduction of brass instrument
Brass instrument
A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...
s evokes film noir, playing to the film's setting in a city controlled by corrupt police. The theme shifts from piano to a full orchestra, and as the story develops, the strings become more imposing, with an increasing number of sustain
Sustain
In music, sustain is a parameter of musical sound over time. As its name implies, it denotes the period of time during which the sound remains before it becomes inaudible, or silent.Additionally, sustain is the third of the four segments in an ADSR envelope...
s and rises
Melodic motion
Complex melodic motion is the quality of movement of a melody, including nearness or farness of successive pitches or notes in a melody. This may be described as conjunct or disjunct, stepwise or skipwise, respectively and involves the use of the complex number, i, in its calculation.Bruno Nettl ...
. Eastwood introduces voices reminiscent of those in a horror film score during the child murder flashbacks. The score was orchestrated and conducted by Lennie Niehaus
Lennie Niehaus
Lennie Niehaus is an American alto saxophonist, arranger, and composer on the West Coast jazz scene. He has played with the Stan Kenton big band, and various other jazz bands on the West Coast of the U.S. Niehaus has arranged and composed for motion pictures, including several produced by Clint...
. It was released on CD in North America on , 2008, through record label Varèse Sarabande
Varèse Sarabande
Varèse Sarabande is an American record label, distributed by Universal Music Group, which specializes in film scores and original cast recordings. It aims to reissue rare or unavailable albums as well as newer releases by artists no longer under a contract...
.
Disempowerment of women
Changeling begins with an abduction, but largely avoids framing the story as a family drama to concentrate on a portrait of a woman whose desire for independence is seen as a threat to male-dominated society. The film depicts 1920s Los Angeles as a city in which the judgment of men takes precedence; women are labeled "hysterical and unreliable" if they dare to question it. Film critic Prairie Miller said that in its portrayal of female courage the film was "about as feminist as Hollywood can get", and that because of this it had been the subject of sexist disdain. She compared this with the sexism shown to the women in Changeling and those who vied for high political office in 2008. Miller surmised that attitudes to independent, career-minded women had not changed significantly in the intervening years: Collins defies male-generated cultural expectations that women are not suited for professional careers and is punished for it. Rather than "an expression of feminist awareness", David DenbyDavid Denby (film critic)
David Denby is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.-Background and education:Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B.A...
argues, the film—like Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 American sports drama film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood, Hilary Swank, and Morgan Freeman...
—is "a case of awed respect for a woman who was strong and enduring". The portrait of a vulnerable woman whose mental state is manipulated by the authorities was likened to the treatment of Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
's character in Gaslight
Gaslight (1944 film)
Gaslight is a 1944 mystery-thriller film adapted from Patrick Hamilton's play, Gas Light, performed as Angel Street on Broadway in 1941. It was the second version to be filmed; the first, released in the United Kingdom, had been made a mere four years earlier...
(1944), who also wondered if she might be insane; Eastwood cited photographs that show Collins smiling with the child she knows is not hers. Like many other women of the period who were deemed disruptive, Collins is forced into the secret custody of a mental institution. The film shows that psychiatry became a tool in the gender politics of the era, only a few years after women's suffrage in the United States
History of women's suffrage in the United States
Woman suffrage in the United States was achieved gradually, at state and local levels, during the 19th Century and early 20th Century, culminating in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provided: "The right of citizens of the United States to...
was guaranteed by the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920....
. As women ceased to be second-class citizens and began to assert their independence, the male establishment used mental institutions in an effort to disempower them; in common with other unmanageable women, Collins is subjected to medical treatment designed to break her spirit and compel obedience. The film quotes the testimony of the psychiatrist who treated Collins. Eastwood said the testimony evidenced how women were prejudged, and that the behavior of the police reflected how women were seen at the time. He quoted the words of the officer who sent Collins to the mental facility: Something is wrong with you. You're an independent woman. Eastwood said, "The period could not accept [it]".
Corruption in political hierarchies
Romantic notions of the 1920s as a more innocent period are put aside in favor of depicting Los Angeles as ruled by a despotic political infrastructure, steeped in sadistic, systematic corruption throughout the city government, police force and medical establishment. In addition to being a Kafkaesque drama about the search for a missing child, the film also focuses on issues relevant to the modern era. Eastwood noted a correlation between the corruption of 1920s Los Angeles and that of the modern era, manifesting in the egos of a police force that thinks it cannot be wrong and the way in which powerful organizations justify the use of corruption. "[The] Los Angeles police department every so often seems to go into a period of corruption," he said, "It's happened even in recent years ... so it was nice to comment [on that] by going back to real events in 1928." Eastwood said that Los Angeles had always been seen as "glamorous", but he believed there had never been a "golden age" in the city. In Changeling, this dissonance manifests in the actions of Arthur Hutchins, who travels to the city in the hope of meeting his favorite actor. Eastwood said that given the corruption that the story covers, Hutchins' naïvete seemed "bizarre". As a lesson in democratic activism, the film shows what it takes to provoke people to speak against unchecked authority, no matter the consequences. Richard Brody of The New YorkerThe New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
said this rang as true for 1928 Los Angeles as it did for Poland in 1980 or Pakistan in 2008
Pakistani general election, 2008
A general election was held in Pakistan on 18 February 2008, after being postponed from 8 January 2008. The original date was intended to elect members of the National Assembly of Pakistan, the lower house of the Majlis-e-Shoora...
. The film directly quotes Chief of police James E. Davis: "We will hold trial on gunmen in the streets of Los Angeles. I want them brought in dead, not alive, and I will reprimand any officer who shows the least bit of mercy to a criminal." It compares police excess to the vigilantism
Vigilante
A vigilante is a private individual who legally or illegally punishes an alleged lawbreaker, or participates in a group which metes out extralegal punishment to an alleged lawbreaker....
of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
of the 1920s, as the department's "Gun Squad" carries out illegal executions of criminals—not to eliminate crime, but competition. The pressure from the police hierarchy was a motivator for officers to quickly solve Walter Collins' disappearance, and a potential reason why they ignored the fact they had returned the wrong child.
Children and violence
Changeling sits with other late-period Eastwood films in which parenting—and the search for family—is a theme. It makes literal the parental struggle to communicate with children. It can also be seen as a variation of the Eastwood "revenge movie" ethic; in this case, the "avenging grunt" transforms into a courteous woman who only once makes a foul-mouthed outburst. Eastwood dealt with themes of child endangerment in A Perfect WorldA Perfect World
A Perfect World is a 1993 drama film directed by Clint Eastwood, and starring Kevin Costner as an escaped convict who befriends a young boy , and ends up embarking on a road trip with the child...
(1993) and Mystic River
Mystic River (film)
Mystic River is a 2003 American drama film directed, co-produced and scored by Clint Eastwood, starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney and Emmy Rossum. The film was written by Brian Helgeland, based on Dennis Lehane's novel of the same...
(2003). Changeling is a thematic companion piece to Mystic River, which also depicted a community contaminated by an isolated, violent act against a child—a comparison with which Eastwood agreed. He said that showing a child in danger was "about the highest form of drama you can have", as crimes against them were to him the most horrible. Eastwood explained that crimes against children represented a theft of lives and innocence. He said, "When [a crime] comes along quite as big as this one, you question humanity. It never ceases to surprise me how cruel humanity can be." Samuel Blumenfeld of Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
said the scene featuring Northcott's execution by hanging was "unbearable" due to its attention to detail; he believed it one of the most convincing pleas against the death penalty imaginable. Eastwood noted that for a supporter of capital punishment, Northcott was an ideal candidate, and that in a perfect world the death penalty might be an appropriate punishment for such a crime. He said that crimes against children would be at the top of his list for justifications of capital punishment, but that whether one were pro- or anti-capital punishment, the barbarism of public executions must be recognized. Eastwood argued that in putting the guilty party before his victims' families, justice may be done, but after such a spectacle the family would find it hard to find peace. The scene's realism was deliberate: the audience hears Northcott's neck breaking, his body swings, and his feet shake. It was Eastwood's intention to make it unbearable to watch.
Strategy
Changeling premiered in competition at the 61st Cannes Film Festival2008 Cannes Film Festival
The 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 14 to May 25, 2008. In addition to films selected for competition this year, major Hollywood productions such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Kung Fu Panda had their world premieres at the festival.The British press...
on May 20, 2008. The film was Eastwood's fifth to enter competition at the festival. Its appearance was not part of the original release plan. Universal executives had been looking forward to the festival without the worry associated with screening a film, until Eastwood made arrangements for Changelings appearance. He was pleased with the critical and commercial success that followed Mystic River
Mystic River (film)
Mystic River is a 2003 American drama film directed, co-produced and scored by Clint Eastwood, starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney and Emmy Rossum. The film was written by Brian Helgeland, based on Dennis Lehane's novel of the same...
s appearance at the festival in 2003 and wanted to generate the same "positive buzz" for Changeling. The film was still in post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
one week before the start of the festival. It appeared at the 34th Deauville American Film Festival
Deauville American Film Festival
The Deauville American Film Festival is a yearly film festival devoted to American cinema, taking place since 1975 in Deauville, France. It was established by Lionel Chouchan and André Halimi....
, held September 5–14, 2008, and had its North American premiere on October 4, 2008 as the centerpiece of the 46th New York Film Festival
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
, screening at the Ziegfeld Theatre
Ziegfeld Theatre
The Ziegfeld Theatre was a Broadway theater located at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and 54th Street in Manhattan, New York City. It was built in 1927 and, despite public protests, was razed in 1966....
.
The producers and Universal considered opening Changeling wide in its first weekend to capitalize on Jolie's perceived box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
appeal, but they ultimately modeled the release plan after those of other Eastwood-directed films, Mystic River in particular. While the usual strategy is to open films by notable directors in every major city in the United States to ensure a large opening gross, in what the industry calls a "platform release", Eastwood's films generally open in a small number of theaters before opening wide a week later. Changeling was released in 15 theatersThe theater count refers to individual movie theater
Movie theater
A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....
s that may include multiple auditoriums. The screen count refers to individual auditoriums. in nine markets in the United States on October 24, 2008. The marketing strategy involved trailers that promoted Eastwood's involvement and the more commercial mystery thriller elements of the story. Universal hoped the limited release would capitalize on good word-of-mouth support from "serious movie fans" rather than those in the 18–25-year-old demographic
Demographic profile
A demographic or demographic profile is a term used in marketing and broadcasting, to describe a demographic grouping or a market segment...
. The film was released across North America on October 31, 2008, playing at 1,850 theaters, expanding to 1,896 theaters by its fourth week. Changeling was released in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2008, in Ireland on November 28, 2008, and in Australia on February 5, 2009.
Box office
Changeling performed modestly at the box office, grossing more internationally than in North America. The total worldwide gross was $113 million. The film's limited American release saw it take $502,000—$33,441 per theater—in its first two days. Exit polling showed strong commercial potential across a range of audiences. It made $2.3M in its first day of wide release, going on to take fourth place in the weekend box office chart with $9.4M—a per-theater average of $5,085. This return surpassed Universal's expectations for the weekend. Changelings link to the Inland EmpireInland Empire (California)
The Inland Empire is a region in Southern California. The region sits directly east of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Inland Empire most commonly is used in reference to the U.S. Census Bureau's federally-defined Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan area, which covers more than...
—the locale of the Wineville killings—generated additional local interest, causing it to outperform the national box office by 45% in its opening weekend.Changeling took $117,862 in 16 Inland Empire theaters, for an average of $7,366 per location. The film surpassed expectations in its second weekend of wide release, declining 22% to take $7.3M. By the fourth week, Changeling had dropped to fifth place at the box office, having taken $27.6M overall. In its sixth week the number of theaters narrowed to 1,010, and Changeling dropped out of the national top ten, though it remained in ninth place on the Inland chart.In the film's sixth week of release in the Inland Empire, it earned $20,540 on 14 screens. Changeling completed its theatrical run in North America on January 8, 2009, having earned $35.7M overall.
Changeling made its international debut in four European markets on November 12–14, 2008, opening in 727 theaters to strong results. Aided by a positive critical reaction, the film took $1.6M in Italy from 299 theaters (a per-location average of $5,402), and $209,000 from 33 screens in Belgium. Changeling had a slower start in France, but improved to post $2.8M from 417 theaters in its first five days, finishing the weekend in second place at the box office. The second week in France saw the box office drop by just 27%, for a total gross of $5.4M. By November 23, 2008, the film had taken $8.6M outside North America. The weekend of November 28–30 saw Changeling take $4.4M from 1,040 theaters internationally; this included its expansion into the United Kingdom, where it opened in third place at the box office, taking $1.9M from 349 theaters. It took $1.5M from the three-day weekend, but the total was boosted by the film's opening two days earlier to avoid competition from previews of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. The return marked the best opening of any Eastwood-directed film in the United Kingdom to that point. Its second week of release in the United Kingdom saw a drop of 27% to $1.1M. Changeling earned $7.6M in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.
Changelings release in other European markets continued throughout . By December 8, the film had opened in 1,167 theaters in nine markets for an international gross of $19.1M. Changelings next significant international release came in Spain on December 19, 2008, where it opened in first place at the box office with $2.0M from 326 theaters. This figure marked the best opening for an Eastwood-directed film in the country to that point; after six weeks it had earned $11.0M. In , major markets in which the film opened included Germany, South Korea and Russia. In Germany, it opened in ninth place at the box office with $675,000 from 194 theaters. South Korea saw a "solid" opening of $450,000 from 155 theaters. In Russia, it opened in eighth place with $292,000 from 95 theaters. By January 26, 2009, the film had taken $47.2M from 1,352 international theaters. Aided by strong word-of-mouth support, Changelings Australian release yielded $3.8M from 74 screens after eight weeks. The film opened in Japan on February 20, 2009, where it topped the chart in its first week with $2.4M from 301 screens. After six weeks, it had earned $12.8M in the country. The film's last major market release was in Mexico on February 27, 2009, where it earned $1.4M. The international gross was $77.3M.
Home media
Changeling was released on Blu-ray DiscBlu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
, DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and Video on Demand
Video on demand
Video on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...
in North America on February 17, 2009, and in the United Kingdom on March 30, 2009. After its first week of release, Changeling placed fourth in the DVD sales chart with 281,000 units sold for $4.6 million; by its fourth week of release, the film had dropped out of the top 10, having earned $10.1 million. As of the latest figures, 762,000 units have been sold, translating to $12,638,223 in revenue. The DVD release included two featurette
Featurette
Featurette is a term used in the American film industry to designate a film whose length is approximately three quarters of a reel, or about 20–44 minutes in running time - thus midway between a short subject and a feature film; thus it is a "small feature"...
s: Partners in Crime: Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie and The Common Thread: Angelina Jolie Becomes Christine Collins. The Blu-ray Disc release included two additional features: Archives and Los Angeles: Then and Now.
General response
The film's screening at Cannes met with critical acclaim, prompting speculation it could be awarded the Palme d'OrPalme d'Or
The Palme d'Or is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and is presented to the director of the best feature film of the official competition. It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du...
. The award eventually went to Entre les murs
Entre les murs
The Class is a 2008 French drama film directed by Laurent Cantet. Its original French title is Entre les murs, which translates literally to "Between the walls". It is based on the 2006 novel of the same name by François Bégaudeau...
(The Class). Straczynski claimed that Changelings loss by two votes was due to the judges' not believing the story was based on fact. He said they did not believe the police would treat someone as they had Collins. The loss led to Universal's request that Straczynski annotate the script with sources. Although the positive critical notices from Cannes generated speculation that the film would be a serious contender at the 2009 Academy Awards, the North American theatrical release met with a more mixed response. Critics generally judged Changeling well-acted and beautifully shot, but considered the compelling story to have been told too conventionally. Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalized
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, reported that reviews were "generally favorable", with an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 63 based on 38 reviews. As of January 28, 2011, 62% of 191 critics listed by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
had given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site reported that 67% of selected notable critics gave it a positive write-up, based on a sample of 12. The film's reception in several European countries was more favorable, and in the United Kingdom 83% of critics listed by Rotten Tomatoes gave Changeling a positive review.
CinemaScore
CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.-Background:...
polls conducted during the opening weekend revealed the average grade cinemagoers gave Changeling was A− on an A+ to F scale. Audiences were mostly older; 68% were over 30 and 61% were women. Audience evaluations of "excellent" and "definitely recommended" were above average. The main reasons given for seeing the film were its story (65%), Jolie (53%), Eastwood (43%), and that it was based on fact (42%).
Reviews
Todd McCarthy of VarietyVariety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
said Jolie was more affecting than in A Mighty Heart
A Mighty Heart (film)
A Mighty Heart is a 2007 drama film directed by Michael Winterbottom; It is an adaptation of Mariane Pearl's memoir, A Mighty Heart. Although initially a financial failure, A Mighty Heart was met with relatively positive reviews from both critics and viewers alike.The film was screened out of...
(2007) because she relied less on artifice. He also noted a surfeit of good supporting performances, Michael Kelly's in particular. Oliver Séguret of Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
said the cast was the film's best feature. He praised the supporting actors and said Jolie's performance was forceful yet understated. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
said Jolie shunned her "movie star" persona to appear vulnerable and resolute. He perceived the supporting characters—Amy Ryan's excepted—as having few shades of gray. David Ansen, writing in Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, echoed the sentiment, but said that "some stories really are about the good guys and the bad". He said that with the distractions of Jolie's celebrity and beauty put aside, she carried the role with restraint and intensity. Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
felt that Jolie's celebrity was distracting enough to render her unconvincing, and David Denby
David Denby (film critic)
David Denby is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.-Background and education:Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B.A...
of The New Yorker said that while Jolie showed skill and selflessness, the performance and character were uninteresting. He said Collins was one-dimensional, lacking desires or temperament. He cited similar problems with Malkovich's Briegleb, concluding, "The two of them make a very proper and dull pair of collaborators."
McCarthy admired the "outstanding" script, calling it ambitious and deceptively simple. He said Eastwood respected the script by not playing to the melodramatic aspects and not telegraphing the story's scope from the start. Honeycutt wrote that due to its close adherence to the history the drama sagged at one point, but that the film did not feel as long as its 141 minutes because the filmmakers were "good at cutting to the chase". Ansen said Straczynski's dialogue tended to the obvious, but that while the film lacked the moral nuance of Eastwood's others, the well-researched screenplay was "a model of sturdy architecture", each layer of which built audience disgust into a "fine fury". He said, "when the tale is this gripping, why resist the moral outrage?"
Séguret said the film presented a solid recreation of the era, but that Eastwood did not seem inspired by the challenge. Séguret noted that Eastwood kept the embers of the story alight, but that it seldom burst into flames. He likened the experience to being in a luxury car: comfortable yet boring. Denby and Ansen commented that Eastwood left the worst atrocities to audiences' imaginations. Ansen said this was because Eastwood was less interested in the lurid aspects of the case. McCarthy praised the thoughtful, unsensationalized treatment, while Denby cited problems with the austere approach, saying it left the film "both impressive and monotonous". He said Eastwood was presented with the problem of not wanting to exploit the "gruesome" material because this would contrast poorly with the delicate emotions of a woman's longing for her missing son. Denby said Eastwood and Straczynski should have explored more deeply the story's perverse aspects. Instead, he said, the narrative methodically settled the emotional and dramatic issues—"reverently chronicling Christine's apotheosis"—before "[ambling] on for another forty minutes". Ansen said the classical approach lifted the story to another level, and that it embraced horror film conventions only in the process of transcending them. McCarthy said Changeling was one of Eastwood's most vividly realized films, noting Stern's cinematography, the set and costume design, and CGI landscapes that merged seamlessly with location shots. Dargis was not impressed by the production design; she cited the loss of Eastwood's regular collaborator Henry Bumstead—who died in 2006—as a factor in Changelings "overly pristine" look.
Damon Wise of Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
called Changeling "flawless", and McCarthy said it was "emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed". He stated that Changeling was a more complex and wide-ranging work than Eastwood's Mystic River, saying the characters and social commentary were brought into the story with an "almost breathtaking deliberation". He said that as "a sorrowful critique of the city's political culture", Changeling sat in the company of films such as Chinatown and L.A. Confidential
L.A. Confidential (film)
L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American film based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same title, the third book in his L.A. Quartet. Both the book and the film tell the story of a group of LAPD officers in the 1950s, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity...
. Honeycutt said the film added a "forgotten chapter to the L.A. noir" of those films, and that Eastwood's melodic score contributed to an evocation of a city and a period "undergoing galvanic changes". Honeycutt said, "[the] small-town feel to the street and sets ... captures a society resistant to seeing what is really going on". Séguret said that while Changeling had few defects, it was mystifying that other critics had such effusive praise for it. Denby said it was beautifully made, but that it shared the chief fault of other "righteously indignant" films in congratulating the audience for feeling contempt for the "long-discredited" attitudes depicted. Ansen concluded that the story was told in such a sure manner that only a hardened cynic would be left unmoved by the "haunting, sorrowful saga".
Awards and honors
In addition to the following list of awards and nominations, the National Board of Review of Motion PicturesNational Board of Review of Motion Pictures
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures was founded in 1909 in New York City, just 13 years after the birth of cinema, to protest New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.'s revocation of moving-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. The mayor believed that the new medium...
named Changeling one of the 10 best films of 2008, as did the International Press Academy
International Press Academy
The International Press Academy is a large and diverse association of professional entertainment journalists, representing both domestic and foreign markets in print, television, radio, cable and new media outlets. The academy was founded in 1996 by Mirjana Van Blaricom...
, which presents the annual Satellite Awards. Several critics included the film on their lists of the top 10 best films of 2008. Anthony Lane
Anthony Lane
Anthony Lane is a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.-Personal life:Lane lives in Cambridge with Allison Pearson, a British writer and former Daily Mail columnist...
of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
named it second best, Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine named it fourth best, and Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered on Biscayne Bay in the Omni district of Downtown Miami, Florida, United States...
named it joint fourth best with Eastwood's Gran Torino.
| Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 81st Academy Awards 81st Academy Awards The 81st Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , honored the best films of 2008 and took place February 22, 2009, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST... |
Best Actress in a Leading Role Academy Award for Best Actress Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry... |
Angelina Jolie | |
| Best Art Direction Academy Award for Best Art Direction The Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999... |
James Murakami, Gary Fettis | ||
| Best Cinematography Academy Award for Best Cinematography The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:... |
Tom Stern | ||
| 2008 African American Film Critics Association Awards | Best Actress | Angelina Jolie | |
| 2009 Artios Award Nominations for Outstanding Achievement in Casting Casting Society of America Founded in Los Angeles, California in 1982, the Casting Society of America is a professional society of about 350 casting directors for film, television, and theatre in Australia, Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. The society is not to be confused with an industry union. The... |
Big Budget Feature – Drama | Ellen Chenoweth | |
| 2008 Art Directors Guild Awards Art Directors Guild Awards 2008 The 13th Art Directors Guild Awards, which were given on February 14, 2009, honored the best production designers of films and televisions in 2008.-Film: Contemporary Film:*Mark Digby – Slumdog Millionaire... |
Excellence in Production Design – Period Film | James Murakami | |
| 62nd British Academy Film Awards 62nd British Academy Film Awards The 62nd British Academy Film Awards, hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, took place on 8 February 2009, and honoured the best films of 2008.-Best Actor:Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler*Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon... |
Best Actress in a Leading Role BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Best Actress in a Leading Role is a British Academy Film award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to recognise an actress who has delivered an outstanding leading performance in a film.- Winners and nominees :... |
Angelina Jolie | |
| Best Cinematography BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography -Best Cinematography - Colour:* 1963 - From Russia with Love - Ted Moore** Nine Hours to Rama – Arthur Ibbetson** The Running Man – Robert Krasker** Sammy Going South – Erwin Hillier** The Scarlet Blade – Jack Asher... |
Tom Stern | ||
| Best Costume Design BAFTA Award for Best Costume Design The British Academy Film Award for Best Costume Design is one of the annual film awards given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.-1960s:* 1969 - Oh! What a Lovely War - Anthony Mendleson** Funny Girl – Irene Sharaff... |
Deborah Hopper | ||
| Best Direction BAFTA Award for Best Direction Winners of the BAFTA Award for Best Direction presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.-2010s:* 2010 - David Fincher – The Social Network** Tom Hooper – The King's Speech** Danny Boyle – 127 Hours... |
Clint Eastwood | ||
| Best Editing BAFTA Award for Best Editing The BAFTA Award for Best Editing is one of several annual awards presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . The film-voting members of the Academy select the five nominated films in each category; only the principal editor for each film are named, which excludes additional... |
Joel Cox, Gary D. Roach | ||
| Best Screenplay BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay * 1982 - Missing - Costa-Gavras and Donald E. Stewart** E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - Melissa Mathison** Gandhi - John Briley** On Golden Pond - Ernest Thompson* 1981 - Gregory's Girl - Bill Forsyth... |
J. Michael Straczynski | ||
| Best Production Design BAFTA Award for Best Production Design List of winners of the BAFTA Awards from 1964 to the present in the category "Best Production Design".-1960s:Best British Production Design - Black and White1964: Dr... |
James Murakami, Gary Fettis | ||
| Best Sound BAFTA Award for Best Sound The British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Best Sound has been presented to its winners since 1968 and sound designers of all nationalities are eligible to receive the award.-Winners 1968-present:... |
Walt Martin, Alan Robert Murray, John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff | ||
| 2008 Chicago Film Critics Association Chicago Film Critics Association The Chicago Film Critics Association is an American film critic association.-Members:Current members include:*Sarah Knight Adamson*Zbigniew Banas*Shelley Cameron*Dave Canfield*Vittorio Carli*Erik Childress*Camerin Courtney*Bonnie DeShong... Awards |
Best Actress Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress The Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress is an annual award given by the Chicago Film Critics Association.-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:-References:... |
Angelina Jolie | |
| 60th Christopher Award Christopher Award The Christopher Award is presented to the producers, directors, and writers of books, motion pictures and television specials that "affirm the highest values of the human spirit"... s |
Feature Films | ||
| 2008 Costume Designers Guild Awards Costume Designers Guild Awards 2008 The 11th Costume Designers Guild Awards, honouring the best costume designs in film and television for 2008, will be given on February 17, 2009... |
Excellence in Costume Design – Period Film | Deborah Hopper | |
| 14th Critics' Choice Awards Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2008 The 14th Critics' Choice Awards were presented on Thursday, January 8, 2009 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium to honor the finest achievements in 2008 filmmaking.Nominees were announced on December 9, 2008.-Best Film:Slumdog Millionaire... |
Best Actress | Angelina Jolie | |
| Best Film | |||
| Best Score | Clint Eastwood | ||
| 2009 Empire Awards Empire Awards 2009 The 14th Empire Awards , honoring the best in film in 2008, were held on March 29, 2009 at the Grosvenor House Hotel and hosted by Dara Ó Briain. The shortlisted nominees were revealed on March 2, 2009 and finale voting ended on March 12, 2009. Beginning with this year the Empire Awards were... |
Best Actress | Angelina Jolie | |
| 66th Golden Globe Awards 66th Golden Globe Awards The 66th Golden Globe Awards Ceremony was broadcast on January 11, 2009, from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, United States on the NBC TV network... |
Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama | Angelina Jolie | |
| Best Original Score Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score The Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score is one of several categories presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association , an organization of journalists who cover the United States film industry, but are affiliated with publications outside North America, since its institution in 1947... |
Eastwood | ||
| 6th Irish Film and Television Academy Awards The 6th Annual Irish Film & Television Awards 2009 The 6th Irish Film and Television Awards took place on 14 February 2009 at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, and was hosted by Ryan Tubridy.-Awards in Film:Film* Hunger ** 32A** A Film with Me in It** The Escapist... |
Best International Actress | Angelina Jolie | |
| 2009 Japan Academy Prize | Japan Academy Prize for Outstanding Foreign Language Film Japan Academy Prize for Outstanding Foreign Language Film Every year since its inception, the Japanese Academy has recognized an outstanding foreign film. The year that any given film is nominated is not based on the film's domestic release date but rather on the date it is released in Japan. As delays of over four months are not uncommon, many films are... |
||
| 2008 London Film Critics' Circle Awards | Actress of the Year | Angelina Jolie | |
| Director of the Year | Clint Eastwood | ||
| 2009 Rembrandt Awards | Best International Actress | Angelina Jolie | |
| 2008 Satellite Awards Satellite Awards 2008 The winners of the 13th Annual Satellite Awards, honoring the best in film and television in 2008, were announced on December 14, 2008.-Top 10 films:*Ballast*Changeling*Doubt*The Dark Knight*Frost/Nixon*Frozen River*Milk... |
Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama | Angelina Jolie | |
| Best Cinematography Satellite Award for Best Cinematography The Satellite Award for Best Cinematography is one of the annual Satellite Awards given by the International Press Academy.- 1990s :- 2000s :... |
Tom Stern | ||
| 35th Saturn Award Saturn Award The Saturn Award is an award presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films to honor the top works in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, television, and home video. The Saturn Awards were devised by Dr. Donald A. Reed in 1972, who felt that films within... s |
Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film | ||
| Best Actress | Angelina Jolie | ||
| Best Costumes | Deborah Hopper | ||
| Best Director | Clint Eastwood | ||
| Best Music | Clint Eastwood | ||
| Best Writing | J. Michael Straczynski | ||
| 15th Screen Actors Guild Awards 15th Screen Actors Guild Awards ----Best Cast - Motion Picture: Slumdog Millionaire----Best Cast - Drama Series: Mad Men Best Cast - Comedy Series: 30 Rock ... |
Best Actress in a Leading Role – Motion Picture | Angelina Jolie | |
| 2008 Visual Effects Society Awards | Outstanding Matte Paintings in a Feature Motion Picture | Romain Bayle, Abel Milanes, Allan Lee, Debora Dunphy | |
| Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Motion Picture | Michael Owens, Geoffrey Hancock, Jinnie Pak, Dennis Hoffman | ||
| 2008 Women Film Critics' Circle Awards | Adrienne Shelly Award | ||
| Best Film About Women |