Rollerskater in the dark

Rating: 8/10 (17 November 2008)

So you're Clint Eastwood, everybody knows you're a patriot, a conclusion gleaned from the fact that the man just shot two WWII movies back to back. So what does a Sarah Palin supporter do for an encore? You pull the rug out from under everybody's feet, that's what. "The Changeling" is a melodrama like how "Unforgiven" was a western. There's a prism, shot, of course, with the luxury of hindsight that underlines the dated sensibilities of the original incarnation. In the 1992 Academy Award-winning picture, the filmmaker demythologized the genre by examining the morality of violence through the eyes of an aging gunslinger. This time, the emotional violence inherent in melodrama, or what was considered as women's pictures, is foregrounded by our awareness that Lars Von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark"(itself a product of "weepies" such as King Vidor's "Stella Dallas") informs this period-piece melodrama. Von Trier, well-known to the international film community as being vehemently anti-American, would seem like an unlikely inspirational for this card-carrying Republican, who proves to be a true maverick by answering "Flags of our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" with a film that stealthily attacks the ideology of our country.
"The Changeling" takes place in the dark ages, the late-twenties, an era where women were expected to be homemakers, not breadwinners, and above all else, to be subservient towards men. As Spencer Tracy put it to Katherine Hepburn in George Cukor's "Adam's Rib", "I want a wife, not a competitor!" And mind you, this was 1949. If a woman tried to get ahead, like Stella Dallas(Barbara Stanwyck) does in the 1937 remake that bears her namesake, the woman was usually punished for having desires that existed outside the sanctity of the prescribed domains mapped out for her kind. In "The Changeling", Christine Collins(Angelina Jolie) is a supervisor at a telephone company. While the row of women are seated at their switchboards, Christine glides on by them; her feet enabled by rollerskates, her position of authority enabled by a man. The scene where her boss promises Christine a managerial job is two-fold for its dual existence in time. At the outset of the opening credits, the filmmaker employs the original Universal insignia, which has the effect of orientating the audience to purview "The Changeling" as a contemporary film of its time: the late-twenties. Christine's boss seemingly pats himself on the back while he offers his protégé his kudos, and while it may play like condescension to our modern sensibilities, our postulated late-twenties selves are asked to find his behavior normal, as we consider the context of her promotion, an era when women bosses were more than likely, in short supply. In keeping with the genre requirements of melodrama, Christine is punished for being something other than a mother or a wife.
On her day off, on a day when Christine promised her son Walter(Gattlin Griffith) a day at the movies, the mother is asked to sub for a sick supervisor. When we next see her at work, the skates are off; Christine's nonchalance conveyed by her gliding is replaced by the more humble act of walking. In her office, on the phone in tears, she's just like all the women, in a seated position, as her amorous boss walks past the doorway. The red on her lips has been superseded by the red in her bloodshot eyes. Christine gets her just desserts for being a siren to her boss. Late in "The Changeling", Christine is punished again, in a scene that evokes "Stella Dallas", the bereft woman is forced to look at somebody else's happiness, through a window(just like Stella, who watches her daughter get married), as a woman and child are reunited after a long spell, in which all of the missing children were presumed dead. The preceding scene is especially cruel because the caller should have been more specific, more sensitive, when referring to the found child. Christine's expectations, not to mention, the audience's expectations are raised, as the caller relays to our heroine that "a child has been found." Christine must think she means her Walter. It's a shrewd bit of audience manipulation when we learn, along with Christine, at the police station, that it's not her child who has been recovered.
"The Changeling" most resembles "Dancer in the Dark" at the hanging. As the killer stands on the platform, he half-sings "thirteen steps", a reference to Bjork's "107 Steps"; also, he warbles "Silent Night" under a black hood. In the Von Trier film, the Icelandic pop princess sings "The Next-to-Last Song" in the same a capella style. Earlier, the killer buys a bus ticket to Seattle(the setting for Selma's cross-bearing, and Walter, in what was to be his last words, tells Christine that he's "not afraid of the dark...not afraid of anything." In referencing "Dancer in the Dark", Christine's happiness about finally having "hope", concerning her missing child, makes such faith in Walter's aliveness seem like the ultimate torture, the ultimate expression of melodrama's dark side. To be loyal to a dead child takes precedence over her professional accomplishments, and only then, by keeping the mother in limbo, in perpetuity, can Christine be considered a good woman.