The levels of Guilt; The Limits of Courage

Rating: 9/10 (2 November 2008)

I just saw this a few hours ago. While i generally wait a few days, so as to gain perspective, before posting my comments, I thought I'd give this a whirl right away. I have rarely seen a movie so perfectly cast. Angelina Jolie understands this character and matches that character's emotions at every point. I think the casting of John Malkovich as an anti-authoritarian radio preacher is inspired. We are used to seeing him play arrogant intellectuals, and usually we side with the characters he's playing, despite their arrogance. In this he plays somebody we hope is going to be a man of justice. Very subtly, we are kept wondering if he simply wants fame, if he's manipulating people for his own grandeur, or, more to the point, whether he will stick by Jolie once he's scored his political points. The role is well-written, but, in the hands of another actor plausibility would have been difficult. Malkovich's character is at once worldly, holy and, at some level, sly. Beyond the great casting (and let me say that every main player in this movie is played with forceful realism) the best thing about THE CHANGELING is that Eastwood never trumpets the ambiguities. He accepts and expects the viewer to accept, that characters' motives may be multi-faceted. This acceptance of complexity makes the exposure of villainy all the more powerful. There is something of M in this movie. A character beyond redemption seems, at times, to see right and wrong more clearly than the more casually corrupt. But where M plays like a sort of Marxist civics lesson, THE CHANGELING is, actually, about what Emily Dickinson called the thing with feathers. That's something which goes beyond man-made constructs.