"you're circumsized!"
I feel bad as a filmmaker because I am aware of how bad a critic I would make. Too often and too easily I gauge a movie based on what I believe it promised me and what I believe it ought to do. I'm terribly, zealously unobjective about it.
Still, I'm sorry but I hated Changeling. Primarily because it didn't have a shade of gray in the entire thing. Every single character feels paper-thin and starkly good or evil. Those acting out of self-preservation and arrogance, or vague unexplained murderousness, begin and end the movie on one side of a thick, black line: the Bad Guys. Those who act out of sympathy or caring for others, any degree of sacrifice or concern for someone other than themselves, remain steadfastly on the other side: the Good Guys.
Changeling feels like a long dragged-out procession of unbelievably obtuse actions with no more insight into what motivates them than a stubborn refusal to admit you were wrong. The fact that, purportedly, all of the events are real do not justify loading them into a story. The fact that these things are terrible things, and that the system is a conspiracy of willfully blind ignorance, isn't enough to captivate me. The film is so polarized it gave me a headache, made me antsy for it to just end.
Speaking of which, how many fake-out endings does one movie need? Each time we jumped ahead another couple of years for more of the story, it made me long for Spielberg Endings like A.I. or Minority Report, films that by comparison felt succinct and abrupt.
One last thing: a nitpick, but a big one. (SPOILER AHEAD) Jolie's character, five years after her son's disappearance and presumed murder, is still phoning around as far away as Vegas, checking in at least monthly (seemingly daily) with various Missing Persons departments. Then another long scene happens, and she tells a cop she barely even knows (though we know he's a Good Guy, from earlier) that because of some new news, she has something she hadn't had before: Hope. Hope? It's the end of the movie, and after four closures and still no credits, after she has spent five years plus never giving up, it is supposed to mean something that now, after all this time, she finally has hope? Then what the hell did she have before?
Sorry, but it's been a long time since I almost walked out on a movie, and I sat through The Happening.
Still, I'm sorry but I hated Changeling. Primarily because it didn't have a shade of gray in the entire thing. Every single character feels paper-thin and starkly good or evil. Those acting out of self-preservation and arrogance, or vague unexplained murderousness, begin and end the movie on one side of a thick, black line: the Bad Guys. Those who act out of sympathy or caring for others, any degree of sacrifice or concern for someone other than themselves, remain steadfastly on the other side: the Good Guys.
Changeling feels like a long dragged-out procession of unbelievably obtuse actions with no more insight into what motivates them than a stubborn refusal to admit you were wrong. The fact that, purportedly, all of the events are real do not justify loading them into a story. The fact that these things are terrible things, and that the system is a conspiracy of willfully blind ignorance, isn't enough to captivate me. The film is so polarized it gave me a headache, made me antsy for it to just end.
Speaking of which, how many fake-out endings does one movie need? Each time we jumped ahead another couple of years for more of the story, it made me long for Spielberg Endings like A.I. or Minority Report, films that by comparison felt succinct and abrupt.
One last thing: a nitpick, but a big one. (SPOILER AHEAD) Jolie's character, five years after her son's disappearance and presumed murder, is still phoning around as far away as Vegas, checking in at least monthly (seemingly daily) with various Missing Persons departments. Then another long scene happens, and she tells a cop she barely even knows (though we know he's a Good Guy, from earlier) that because of some new news, she has something she hadn't had before: Hope. Hope? It's the end of the movie, and after four closures and still no credits, after she has spent five years plus never giving up, it is supposed to mean something that now, after all this time, she finally has hope? Then what the hell did she have before?
Sorry, but it's been a long time since I almost walked out on a movie, and I sat through The Happening.