To A T

I said yesterday that for much of the recently past holidays season Catherine and I were just a couple. The boys were off in the wilds of New Jersey (that’s a joke, there are no wilds in NJ that aren’t suburban or urban or roadways! The roadways can be particularly wild! What is it about people and their cars that unleashes the asshole in everso many? It’s like we forget everyone else even exists sometimes! Road rage? or Road anomie?) and so it was just us. 

One evening last weekend we loaded ourselves into the Scion and traveled to one of the two towns in Pennsylvania where we could view Changeling, the fairly recent (last day of October) release of director, Clint Eastwood, starring Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich (both of whom seemed cast somewhat against type for the film.) Now that gas has dropped to under $2/gallon we decided that going to Lancaster from central Bucks County was probably better than driving to the outskirts of Pittsburg in order to view the film and that it would be fairly cheaply accomplished to drive seventy-five miles both ways to see a movie at a second-run cinema.  

The afternoon was cloudy, threatening snow and sleet, (we even experienced a bit) although as the day wore into evening a warm front pushed up from the southwest. By the time we had watched the movie a thick fog swirled generally between Lancaster (probably beyond there and to the west) through Philly and up I-95 along the Delaware. In fact, the fog was very thick and we were glad we chose to use the Turnpike to get back east rather than using one of the secondary roadways that might have been more congenial in many ways but wouldn’t have been as well equipped with lights from cars both approaching us across the median and driving eastward with us. 

It was an odd occurrence for us as we had just been out the night before to see another and a bit more recent Eastwood release, Gran Torino. Ya know, for a guy who made his reputation for playing western gunslingers or vigilante cops, Eastwood does get to the human depths in a lot of his movies. I’m still struck by the westerns Unforgiven and Pale Rider with their protrayals of hard men with some deep and lasting flaws who rise to the call of common humanity and genuine love and affection while maintaining their veneer of toughness and quiet, introspective alienation.

His direction in Mystic River was absolutely amazing I thought. This guy who I’ll always recall as the scourge of us dewy-eyed liberals in the seventies as Harry Callahan using his big gun in a one-man battle against what was seen as the rising tide of urban violence, ending the violence by being the meanest, most violent man on the street, made a movie that was heart-rending in it’s nuance of the relationships among three boys who had experienced an abduction and rape when they were kids together. The acting was deft and shining, especially Tim Robbins as the childhood victim grown and Sean Penn as the harsh and violent crime-boss.  

Thus, on the Friday night when Walt Kowalski, the former auto-worker, Korean War vet and general curmudgeonly, seemingly racist upstanding older white guy turns out to have a depth of intelligence, feeling and honor all rolled into an irrestibly appealing character becomes the unintended savior of a young Hmong man and his family who are beset by a gang of hopeless Hmong youths seeking to establish their own sway over the declining neighborhood, it didn’t strike me as ironic or forced or unreal. Instead, it was a role and a direction I’ve come to regard as “the Eastwood style” that brought me both laughter and tears in the darkened theater. 

As always, the soundtrack is Eastwood’s own jazz renditions written and performed by himself. Beautiful. Yet, before going out on Friday we had checked out previews on our Safari Front Row to find what was “out there.” One of the things listed as out there was Changeling. The reviews we read on Yahoo were quite fascinating. One, by arpine122 particularly struck me: 

THIS MOVIE WAS THE BEST MOVIE EVER MADE, IT MADE TITANIC LOOK LIKE CRAP. THE WHOLE AUDIENCE WAS IN TEARS. ANGELINA JOLIE BRINGS THE CHARACTER TO LIFE, YOU FEEL THE PAIN SHE IS GOING THROUGH. THE STORY, THE ACTING, AND THE DIRECTION ARE ALL OUTSTANDING. HANDS DOWN BEST MOVIE EVER.

The caps, by the way, are just as the review was published on Yahoo. See for yourself!

Our first response was simply to giggle over the obvious adulation of the writer. I mean, this person was VERY impressed, no? Of course how could any movie made be said in such redolently assured a fashion to be “hands down best movie ever made?” I mean, aren’t there one or two others that might merit at least a tie in the writer’s view? I dunno, Chinatown? Philadelphia? Apocalypse Now? Breakfast At Tiffany’s, or … well, you add three or four that you find possibilities for yourself.

Surely this was an immediate post-viewing over-response? Has to be, no? I surely thought so on Friday night. By Saturday night I was a great deal less sure. OK, I’ve given away my own response to what I saw. 

The story of Changeling is the single-minded effort of a woman, Christine Collins, whose son disappeared in 1928 and was probably murdered along with as many as 19-20 other boys by Gordon Northcott, to find the boy and to battle through the hurdles made for her by the LA Police Department of the time. 

But before I give my own views, perhaps I should direct you toward one of the critics who rated the movie only average. This one’s a professional, Chris Cabin at filmcritic.com. Mr. Cabin found flaws, most with the performance of Angelina Jolie. It’s strange no, how one can see the same movie as another person and not notice quite the same flaws?

Chris Farnsworth at E! Online faults Jolie for a “sedated” performance. I presume he watched the same movie as arpine122, Cabin and me. Cabin finds her “overplaying” her role and also believes she “goes all gooey.” 

Of course, there are reasons for that as well. arpine122 nor I haven’t a job critiquing films we don’t make. (Ever the complaint about the critics.) If one cannot make art, then they become a critic … or something along those lines. Maybe that’s true. How many frustrated writers become literary critics? How many wannabee-but-unable-to-be actors, directors, cinematographers become movie critics? For the most pat the professional critic will not sit and watch the movie for “what” the movie presents, but will watch it with an eye toward production and script and acting values in ways that perhaps the general movie=goer will not.  

Some of the flaws Mr. Cabin mentions in his “C” rating of the film I have to own are true in my opinion. There were, especially in the addition of the story of Gordon Northcott who possibly murdered the heroine’s son, a jolting intrusions for me. It may have been necessary in the mind of the screenwriter, J. Michael Straczynski, in his quest for accuracy, to include absolutely everything about the 1928-1930 history of the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders in his script. But, the deranged Gordon Northcott did, for me, provide an jarring interruption to the story I was truly interested in: would Christine Collins be reunited with her son?  Was Walter Collins ever found, alive or dead? As a doting parent that’s where my interest, and my heart, lay. 

The answer was no. To both questions. Walter was never found again in any form. Northcott’s grandmother, who Northcott had thought was his mother, and accomplice admitted at the time to being involved in the murder of Walter Collins. She served time in California for exactly that, murdering the child.  Yet, no body was recovered or identified. The desert, history says, swallowed the little boy bones of most  of Northcott’s victims. Three partial bodies were identified at the time. The movie leaves a possibility open, no body found and one boy who had escaped the hell-hole chicken coop said he was helped to escape by Walter and another child when the three of them broke out one night while the Northcott crew were asleep. 

I loved the movie, with certain reservations. Aside the technical reasons, the rambling script and the lack of focus making the movie three separate stories melded together, I found the emotional aspects of the film simply overwhelming. As I’ve told my friend, Abby, I’m not sure that this film will ever be bought by me on dvd. I did buy one film that moved me greatly, The Hours, and have only been able to watch it again once in four years. The very movement the film made in me has made me leery of ever watching it again. Hiding from emotion, Ms. Therapist? I suppose so. 

But some emotion, although cathartic, may also be harmful if the force is greater than the individual can handle safely. My fear of The Hours, as I suspect it will be with Changeling, is not the emotional response per se, but the aftermath of the emotional response. Yes, I cried and streamed tears and sobs during both movies. The difficulty though is not that, but the aftertaste of the emotion if you will.

The Hours emotionally lingered in me for days. The film’s characters spoke to my heart, and my experience. Loss, contemplation and even performance of suicide, death by AIDS. Watching a loved one wither and die in pain. It was never the emotion within the film that disturbed me. It was the emotions the film recalled to me from my own experiences. 

As someone who’s worked for a lot of her adult life in inner-city addictions recovery and trauma recovery situations I have watched very dear and grand people slip away in great pain through suicide or overdoses. I have imagined them alone and cooling in empty apartments or park benches or alleyways with needles still fastened in their veins. I have remembered them alive and vibrant with a few weeks or months of sobriety, attempting to find their way through the seemingly everlasting internal pains that they could find a bit of surcease from through the agency of the drugs that would eventually strangle them. 

Yes, one must decompress that. One must visit it before it totally overwhelms her. But, doing so through a movie is very likely not the best fashion to decompress, to revisit the haunting memories of people she will never again smile with or talk earnestly with or hug and appreciate. Decompression is often better done with a supervisor and a staff gathered around you. Sometimes, it’s just too much and a Moulin Rouge is better for the heart than a tour de force like The Hours or Changeling. 

That mention, Changeling, brings me toward where I had thought this essay would go to begin with: More Meditation About Children and Their Loss. You see, like Walter, Ian is 10, almost eleven. Occasionally we will return a bit late to home after the school bus has dropped him off. It’s never been more than a few minutes, maybe ten, but it has happened. He lets himself into the house and starts his homework. On one occasion he never bothered to get past seeing neither car parked in front of the house. He wandered down to the basketball court and started playing ball with his friends. He seems to know never to do that again. I’m afraid that neither Catherine nor I were amused and light-hearted about that incident. 

But often when he does get released to play down the street and out-of-sight I wonder if I shall ever see him again. Yes, kinda morbid I suppose, but those are the thoughts that come to the hearts of parents. “Is he safe.” “Will he avoid a headlong dash across a street just as a car rushes headlong down the same street?” Those thoughts we mostly don’t talk about, I suspect. 

When, during the early part of Changeling Christine is called into work and leaves Walter thinking she will return after half a day on her scheduled day-off only to return to a dark house at nightfall and the fearful absence of her single child, my heart caught. My breath stopped. I cried my initial cry during this movie. There were many others, but that one stood out; it wove my deepest fears into a visual reality I could not escape. I was mesmerized through tears and sobs by the images on the screen that seemed so terribly real in my mind’s eye: Radha and Ian. 

He’s not there. 

O my Goddess, he’s not there!

I dunno, maybe Jolie’s portrayal during that scene was “gooey,” maybe it was “sedated.” I found it riveting, calm on the outside somewhat, but I could feel the terror as she searched the neighborhood for her son. Doesn’t one search barely contining the rising fear that she’ll never see him again? Doesn’t she maintain her outward “cool” in order to not allow her fear to somehow make the reality so?

I could feel the hestitation and the hope Christine Collins must have felt as she opened closed door after closed door in her home, hoping, expecting, yearning for her son to be behind the next door. Until there were no more doors to open. Traveling swiflty and consciously along the street, into the yards, listening for the slightest hint of her son’s voice until there were no more sounds left to winnow. Nothing left for it but to call the police and be told that they wouldn’t take a report for 24 hours. 

I imagine those requirements for missing children no longer hold true. Too many snatched or disappeared and publicized, too many Megan Kankas, in the past thirty years for the police to be that nonchalant anymore. Just as the wide open door guarded only by an unlatched screen was shocking to me when I saw it in the film. A simpler time, I suppose, that lasted into the 1950s and 1960s in many places in the USA. A shock of recognition and appalling horror at the same time. Why was he not locked tightly into that peaceful neighborhood home? Doncha know there are terrors roaming the world in search of your son? 

No, Christine Collins never imagined a serial pedophile/child murderer  was possible in 1928, the abduction and murder of Charles A Lindbergh, Jr. just up the road from us in East Amwell, New Jersey, was still 4 years into her future . Megan Kanka and Adam Walsh were 46 and 66 years into her future.

But, Radha Smith had lived to see such things. Radha Smith sat in a darkened cinema and saw a similacrum of her son disappeared and an anguished and hopeful search begun by herself. Terror and heartache in every movement of the lighted screen. She cried, sobbing her fears into the kleenex she had thought to bring with her before seeing the film. Radha in the dark, next to her partner, weeping and sobbing for the loss of her own young son as surely as he’d been Walter Collins and she’d have been Christine. 

Angelina Jolie knows the possibility of that feeling. She knows that the loss of one of her children would devastate her as surely as it devastates the mother or father of a child gunned down on a ghetto-street. The idea of that loss is enough to not simply rend the heart, but to tear the very fabric of the self into shreds. What to do but collapse finally, the bones turned to liquid and the flesh crunbling into the earth, one’s soul desiring only to leave and search for that which one knows can never again be found in this life. 

I loved the film Changeling. Although falling somewhat short of arpine122 in my adulation I find the film worthy of winning an Academy Award for Best Picture. In my estimation Jolie deserves whatever Oscar she will carry home with her for her portrayal of Christine Collins. And this film should, if justice is done, clinch a directing Oscar for Clint Eastwood. It’s that good.

If you’ve not seen the film, I’d recommend that you do. Even if you have to pay considerably more than the $2 we had to pay per person. It will move you and stun you with some of its rich tapestry of Los Angeles in 1928 and a  world that could almost be a fantasy when compared to our lives today. Just beware: the film will move you. Be prepared to be moved.  Yes, almost a fantasy, but a fantasy cut so close to the heart as to leave you for 141 minutes unaware of the difference between your heart and the character’s. 

————————-

Afterward

The tripartite story of this picture almost makes me want to write a portion of this essay that would deal with my reactions to my own profession as it was in 1928 and,  too often enough, continues to be in 2009. There was and still is to a great extent a callous diregard for the individual submerged by the profession’s insistence on being the guardian of “normality” and the enforcer of “social acceptibility.”

In that regard I was ashamed of the history of my profession as I watched the scenes in LA County Hospital’s “psychotic ward.” But, that shame wasn’t just for the past, it was also in knowing that in many ways we as a profession haven’t moved far away from the ideals of that time, not nearly far enough. But that’s another essay  for another day.