Cannes. Changeling.

"A thematic companion piece to Mystic River but more complex and far-reaching, Changeling impressively continues Clint Eastwood's great run of ambitious late-career pictures," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy.

"Emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed, this true story-inspired drama begins small with the disappearance of a young boy, only to gradually fan out to become a comprehensive critique of the entire power structure of Los Angeles, circa 1928."

"Changeling rings the muckracking bells of the likes of I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, and the devoted-mother high notes of Stella Dallas," writes Glenn Kenny. "Its old-fashionedness, or I should say respect for verities, goes hand-in-hand with a particularly Eastwood-esque directness. The result is not as perfect a film as Eastwood has made, but it's damn strong, both as a story and an exploration of the parent-child bond and a polemic. Because despite the fact that it deals with the corruption and venality of a past era, Changeling is at times a very angry picture; Eastwood's angriest, I think, since Unforgiven."

"Beautifully produced and guided by Eastwood's elegant, unostentatious hand, it also boasts a career-best performance by Angelina Jolie who has never been this compelling," writes Mike Goodridge in Screen Daily.

The true story the film's based on, "as incredible as it is compelling," as the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt puts it, was "uncovered by screenwriter J Michael Straczynski in the city's own records and newspapers, adds a forgotten chapter to the LA noir of Chinatown and [LA Confidential]."

Updates: For Time's Richard Corliss, Changeling "juggles elements of LA Confidential, The Black Dahlia, The Snake Pit and any number of serial-killer thrillers. But at its center are the heartache and heroic resolve of a woman who has lost the one person she loves most and is determined to find him, dead or alive, against all obstacles the authorities place in her way. In that sense the movie is a companion piece to last year's Cannes entry A Mighty Heart, in which Jolie played the wife of kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl - except that Changeling is far more taut, twisty and compelling."

"Because the film is based on real events, we know going in how it's going to end; the film's tension rides, therefore, not in the destination but in the journey to get there," notes Kim Voynar at Cinematical.

Eugene Hernandez has a snapshot and quotes from the press conference.

"Whatever it winds up being called, 'L'Ex-Changeling' got a warm reception from the press this morning," reports Salon's Andrew O'Hehir:

Whether that really reflects the film's inherent qualities, or just the experience of observing two prodigious stars of different eras collaborate on a major Hollywood project that wasn't made for morons, is open to debate. For anybody who's ever felt passionate about the movies, it was impossible to resist the spectacle of Eastwood, looking both dapper and weatherbeaten in an elegant cream-colored suit, strolling slowly through a rooftop garden here with the gloriously pregnant Jolie on his arm. It was of course the impersonation of casualness and spontaneity rather than the real thing; they were walking through a forest of photographers on their way to the press conference. But the appearance of being at one's ease while maximally exposed to public scrutiny is the essence of stardom.

Much more follows.

Online viewing tip. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times.

Updates, 5/21: "A view of the human beast at its worst, the film is a tricky bit of storytelling business, in part because it involves a true crime with no moral gray areas, in part because it takes place in the 1920s, an era so at odds with its modern star that it's like watching Joan Crawford do Queen Victoria," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "It's a lurid, nightmarish story, reminiscent of any number of James Ellroy's Los Angeles pulp noirs and one that Mr Eastwood approaches with such restraint that the somber mood soon turns sepulchral.... Despite Ms Jolie's hard work and Mr Eastwood's scrupulous attention, the difficult, fairly one-dimensional character fails to take hold."

"The film's heart is very obviously in the right place, but it is trying to be so many things at once: family drama, cop-corruption thriller, child-snatcher nightmare - and, for Jolie, another flight over the cuckoo's nest, only this time with far more queenly dignity than in Girl, Interrupted," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "Accompanied with a syrupy musical score to cushion the dramatic blows (and to ensure that the audience isn't too horrified or upset too early on) this over-long film fails to convey - is in fact afraid of conveying - the real horror of child loss."

"In the twilight of his directorial career, Clint Eastwood continues to make some of his finest films," writes Geoffrey Macnab in the Independent. This is "a magisterial piece of work.... Eastwood has never been known as a liberal, but it is hard not to see the film as an allegory about the present US administration."

"Changeling is director Clint Eastwood at his most manipulative, leagues beyond Million Dollar Baby," writes Alison Willmore. "With its star, its varnished vintage appearance and the ability to generate bewildering reviews like this one, Changeling is a picture all but created to win Academy Awards. Maybe it will, but hell if it deserves any."

Updates, 5/22: "Eastwood remains an exceptionally talented director," writes Patrick Z McGavin in Stop Smiling. "Largely because of the personal attacks against his work and art by Pauline Kael and her disciples, Eastwood was unfairly underrated for much of his first two decades behind the camera. Ever since Eastwood's official rehabilitation, beginning with Unforgiven in 1992, the critical pendulum has swung too hard and far in the other direction." As for this one, "The sensationalized, tabloid nature of the material does not play to Eastwood's strengths."

"It's a binary world for Mr Clint: there's the outsider/underdog fighting for justice and a cruel status quo trying to keep him/her down, only to be vanquished in the end by all that is Good and Right," blogs the Hollywood Reporter's Steven Zeitchik. "That same straw man from Million Dollar Baby (the opportunistic relatives who stood by while Hilary Swank lost various appendages) is here, only he's been reincarnated as a merciless police captain on the take."

"It's a solid, confident, old-school studio picture that packs a few big emotional wallops," blogs the Guardian's Xan Brooks. "But it is also ponderous and self-important, with a surfeit of lead in its boots. Jolie carries it and her knees sometimes buckle. But the public perception of Jolie is changing as well. She has been the wild child, the ingénue, the sex symbol and the global phenomenon. Now she's entering a new phase and seeing if it fits: the mature, respected artist."

Jolie's "contribution is a positive one, even though she's sometimes in cahoots with a script that threatens to afford this victim of circumstance, corruption and chauvinism a near-angelic status that distracts from the horror of children being kidnapped and murdered," writes Dave Calhoun for Time Out. Overall, the film is "well-crafted and sensitive but never particularly imaginative or surprising and not nearly as claustrophobic or as chilling as Tom Stern's shadowy photography would suggest."

Cinematical's Kim Voynar reports on the press conference.

"If most of Eastwood's films since Unforgiven can be read as different kinds of apologies for Dirty Harry, then this is his most overt mea culpa yet—a critique of the imperfection of justice in genera," writes Ben Kenigsberg for Time Out Chicago. "In a manner less clumsy than the one in Mystic River, Eastwood subtly shifts our sympathies mid-film, suggesting that when the law turns against you, it turns against you completely; and that when it turns toward you, it may be turning with equally unfair force against someone else. (It's difficult not to watch and think of, say, the absolutism practiced at Guantanamo.) The ultimate implication is that society is incapable of addressing even the most horrible of crimes."

Update, 5/27: "Ultimately all of Eastwood's genre-blending comes up with nothing more than a hollow highbrow message movie that lacks all the blood and verve of its lowbrow inspirations," writes Stephen Garrett for Esquire. "Moviegoers may feel that the real exchange plays more like a bait and switch."

---

Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

---

Posted by dwhudson at May 20, 2008 6:38 AM