Clint Eastwood in 2008 – Changelling and Gran Torino
Here is a list: Akira Kurosawa, Frederico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, David Lean, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Alfred Hitchcock. These are the greatest directors of film. I may have missed a few who deserve to be added, but rent any movie from the oeuvre of any of these directors, and you will not likely be disappointed. Eastwood is the latest addition to this upper realm of cinema’s finest storytellers. He is now 78 years old, and his first film as a director was released when he was 41. If cinematic steroids exist, the preternatural Eastwood has been taking them for years. In 2008, he released two movies, the underrated Changelling and the recent box office smash, Gran Torino. Both are great, but, of course, both are Eastwood. Greatness is what Eastwood usually achieves.
Gran Torino’s recent success is a surprise. Eastwood’s career path has brought him from Western hero to 70s tough guy to perspicacious film director. He doesn’t make action films anymore, his films are low-budget, insightful studies on being human, the type of movie making that rarely leads to box office success. What a sly move then, to use the drawing power of his old western alter ego and cast himself as Walt Kowalski, a grizzled Korean war vet who has outlived all his neighbors and now lives amidst first generation Americans, some of whom, to Kowalski surprise, look like his old enemy but actually fought on America’s side during the Vietnam War, as his young Hmong neighbor informs him. Eventually won over by this courageous young neighbor, Sue, Kowalski assumes the role of protector to the fatherless girl and her younger brother, and teaches the boy how to be a man, or at least Kowalski’s version of a man. Insensitive to Kowalski’s bigoted remarks, the two teens forge a strong bond with their neighbor, who takes drastic steps throughout the film to ensure the kids’ safety from local gangs. Eastwood’s Man With No Name has settled down but he never stops fighting. A tough film, with a satisfying ending that also retains the solemn imagery of life in America’s gang riddled streets, Gran Torino is worth a trip to the cineplex.
Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins, focuses on the true account of the abduction of Collins’ son in 1920s Los Angeles. Eastwood shines as an actor in Gran Torino, but his acute directing skills help Changelling to overcome a weak performance from Jolie. Now in her superstar phase, much like Jennifer Lopez, Jolie should be shying away from understated roles and focusing more on characters like the assassin she played in Wanted, which suited her larger-than-life persona. Christine Collins was a strong women, revealed in the film as an obstinate and loyal mother forever dedicated to finding her son, whom she is convinced is alive. Collins’ strength was am indicator of change in the women’s right movement, but her will had to be weakened by the disappearance of her son. I never got the sense from Jolie’s performance that a part of her couldn’t cope with the pressures put on her by the LAPD, who found a different boy and attempted to convince Collins that they had found her missing child. Collins repeated attempts to convince them otherwise are thwarted by a police force eagerly trying to portray itself as effective and uncorrupted. The story is chilling in many parts, as the ‘good’ police begin to unravel the story of a serial killer in the area, and Eastwood stays true to the mystery throughout the film, but the film is most effective when it focuses on the persecution of Collins and her desperate fight to prove the LAPD wrong so that she can resume the search for her actual son. We see lawyers helping her with this cause and lawyers who want to expose corruption, but Collins’ focus is narrow, and the audience is drawn to her mission. The film looks perfect, brilliantly photographed by Tom Stern, who also worked on the haunting Road to Perdition, and Eastwood always has his camera perfectly positioned. I decided two years ago, after seeing Letters From Iwo Jima, that Eastwood is now our best living director. He has now added to additional great films to a remarkable body of work.
In: Movies · Tagged with: Changelling, Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino, Letters From Iwo Jima, Road to Perdition, Tom Stern
