Paying For It - Number 3 (Oscar Edition)

When the nominations for this year's Academy Awards were announced, Changeling, a Clint Eastwood movie set in the 1930s about a mother who loses her child and is used by the Los Angeles Police Department to further their own crusade to resurrect a flailing public image, was on its last legs at the box office. After a few more sessions here and there followed by a final screening on a Sunday at Cineworld Trocadero, it disappeared from the screens.

At this point in time, I had resigned myself to the fact that I had missed it, just one of two instances in my attempt to see all nominated movies for Oscars 2009. The other was The River, which I don't think has ever been screened in the UK.

To my delight, the National Film Theatre decided to present a short run of Changeling in their Studio cinema, a five row, 35 seat cube set in the theatre's foyer. I managed to acquire the final seat for last Friday's session and, although I was pretty close to the screen, I enjoyed the film immensely.

It's a harrowing tale and a frustrating one. To think that, in the 1930s, a stricken mother, searching for a lost son, can be subject to ridicule, slander and incarceration by the very police she hopes will find her son is heartbreaking. Angelina Jolie is amazing as Christine Collins, the distraught mother who finds her son missing when she comes back late from work one day. What happens over the next five years is almost unbelievable if it wasn't true.

In a nutshell, the LAPD forces Collins to accept that the boy that they find 5 months after her son's disappearance is her son, even though the boy is 3 inches shorter and is circumcised. It is definitely not her son, but the more she protests, the more frustrated the authorities get, eventually throwing her into a psychiatric ward for women. Christine Collins has a saviour though, in the guise of Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich) whose determination and support brings hope.

Jolie puts in a fine performance and currently, with the movie still fresh in my mind, I am unsure as to whether she will win the Oscar for Best Actress over Kate Winslet or not. This will be a decision made at the final hour.

The other actors, Malkovich, Jefferey Jones (as Juvenile Department captain), Michael Kelly (as the detective who discovers horror at a farm in Southern California) and Jason Butler Harner all put in fine performances and Eastwood's direction is as good as ever.

A fine film and one that I am glad to have seen before the Oscar ceremony begins.