Films "The Changeling", "Good Hair" and "The Messenger"

[Xavier_Onassis]

This is not, despite the title a Sci-Fi film. It is a period piece, set in LA in 1928, and directed by Clint Eastwood. Christine Collins, a phone company supervisor (on roller skates, and played by Angelina Jolie) is a single mother whose husband has fled. One day, her son Walter vanishes. The LAPD (who are identified as a bunch of murderous boobs) find a boy in Illinois that claims to be her son, but is not. She refuses to accept that he is her son, because he is three inches shorter and in uncircumsized, unlike the real Walter. so she goes to the police and they send her to a mental hospital. There is a Presbyterian crusading radio preacher, well played by John Malkevich and a wavy wig and the whole thing blows up in the cop's face and changes LA forever. The music is properly mournful and excellent, and there is a great assortment of old cars and streetcars. All in all, a very good film, with subtitles in English, Spanish and two kinds of French. I checked this out of the library.

I also got Good Hair, a documentary on Black women's hair, narrated by Chris Rock, which you are sure to learn a little from if you are a Black woman, more if you are a man and a lot if you are neither. One reason for the animosity between Black women and men is hair, and more specifically the immense cost of hairdos that depend on wearing someone else's hair.

Another film I recommend is "The Messenger" with Woody Harrelson, in which he plays one of the officers who has the unpleasant duty of informing how much the Secretary of the Army regrets the death of your son, husband, father, etc. Very well done. I can't say I enjoyed it, but it seemed very well acted and it has a believable and well written plot. Not to be confused with the biopic of Mohammad with the same title, which was also pretty good,but as Monty Python used to say, something Completely Different.

[Amianthus]

This is not, despite the title a Sci-Fi film. It is a period piece, set in LA in 1928, and directed by Clint Eastwood.

The Changeling screenplay also has an interesting historical side to it. It was written by J. Michael Straczynski ("JMS" of Babylon 5 fame) based on the files from a newspaper office. JMS used to be a reporter before he got into writing full time, and had a friend that was still employed for the newspaper that he previously worked at. The newspaper was purging it's archive and destroying a lot of old, "unimportant" files. The friend came across this series of stories about a woman who claimed her son was not her son, and he thought that JMS might be interested in the story. So, he went by, got the old stories before they were destroyed, did some more research in other sources and wrote the screenplay from them.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The plot the the Changeling was from a real life case, but the mother of the murderer seems to have also been a participant, and there was less evidence for the murder of the nineteen victims than the film suggests. The film had no loose ends, while the real event had several.

It is rare that a film with such a good plot is not an adaptation from a novel.

Eastwood is a far better director, in my opinion, than most of those known as great directors, ie Cecil B DeMille and DW Griffith. There is really no major criticism possible of the way this film was made. I do think that Angelina Jolie's lips look too puffy for the fire engine red lipstick, but her tattoos are invisible, as is most of her skin. Her acting is great, but she was beautiful before she blimped up her lips. There are no Black people visible in this film that I noticed, but of course, in the real event at that time, I think they were pretty scarce in LA. It always seems strange to me when Robin Hood's Merry band has a Blackamoor buddy. I guess Clint does not subscribe to violating historical authenticity to be properly ethnically diverse.

When people say that there is a good novel in every life, this shows a lack of what makes for a good plot. One can create an excellent plot from elements of lifetime experience, but generally most people's lives have too many loose ends and inexplicable turns.

And of course, a good film plot must be more concise and polished than a novel plot, as two hours are about as long as a film can be, due to other things, the needs of the theatre owner and the capacity of the human bladder.

My favorite humongeous film is Bertolucci's "1900". SIX HOURS in the two cassette version, The 8 hour version was never distributed. I recommend a rainy day and a large pizza. Not too much soda, though.