This week, I have seen three films about strong women in the 1920s: Small Island is how Jamaican Hortense leaves one small island for another - and fulfils her dream of coming to Britain. But this is the odd one out as it's an adaptation of a fiction, broadcast on television, and about a black woman.
The other two are about white, real life Americans, and are cinema films. Changeling is how Christine Collins's son goes missing - but has the wrong boy returned to her by the police; and her fight to expose this and get her real boy back. Amelia Earhart was the aviation pioneer whose firsts included flying the Atlantic.
Christine fought a corrupt system on and by people, mostly the police. Amelia's battles were more with nature and technology, although some believe there is a cover up to yet be uncovered about her disappearance. If they are right, then Amelia and Ms Collins have much more in common.
Hilary Swank, who starred as Amelia, had recently worked with Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby. His gentle and calm directing contrasts with the sad and intense subject matter of both these films. Last time, Swank played a female boxer; now, she is a pilot. Changeling is angering, unsettling, and actually rather disturbing in its scenes of mental health procedures and execution. (The latter matched Dancer in the Dark and was unnecessary to the story, as well as probably being distressing to act out). Amelia is a much gentler film, whose tensions feel more like action movie thrills than the stomach curdling feelings of watching Changeling.
Are either happy endings? It depends on what you call happy. The synopsis I heard of Million Dollar Baby sounds like a definite 'no', and was told to me in a way that sounded utterly negative. You could tell Christine and Amelia's stories negatively too.
You could also tell Keats' story as a failure. That was my other watching this week: Bright Star. John Keats dies young and poor, before he marries his sweetheart and before the world has appreciated his poems. But most of us have heard of Keats and probably read his poems - even just by having done English literature beyond GSCE level; and whether you personally like him, it is hard not to acknowledge the quality of his work. So the very abrupt ending of Keats's story with his death in Jane Campion's film could be taken as a celebration of the melancholy; or an ode to one whose seemingly unsuccessful life led to posthumous ongoing fame and admiration. To me, it felt more like the former.
The negative reading of Changeling is: For making public that she can prove her 'son' is not her boy Walter, Christine Collins is sent to a mental institution where horrid things happen to her. She never marries, never has another child, never gets a better job or becomes rich. She doesn't really appear to have any friends. And she never gets her son back. She spends her whole life hoping she will, though evidence seems to say he was likely to have been hacked to death along with 19 other abductees.
Amelia Earhart often struggled to gain recognition, and then the funding, for her flights. She had competition from other pilots, male and female. And her trip round the globe ended in a mysterious disappearance - we assume, eventually, death. She did not complete her mission.
But that's not how I read either of those women's lives in the films. Christine Collins (an excellent Angelina Jolie) reveals the corruption in the police, the mayor and the mental health system in her city. She wins her legal case. The murderer is caught and hanged. If she did lose her son to him, she has the knowledge that he was last seen going back for a friend, thus making a very brave sacrifice. The parents and friends of all those 20 dead boys could know that in their tragic and horrific loss, their children led to the exposure and stopping of a wider corruption. The mayor doesn’t run for office. The other women held in a psychiatric ward for upsetting the police are set free. The Pastor who helped her continued to fight for justice. The Chief of Police is demoted and the police Captain who was so cruel to Christine is sacked. And the city and beyond knows the truth about the deliberate swap. There were many moments where I wanted to cheer and clap - as many as when the intensity and unpleasantness were unbearable.
I did not know Amelia's story which is why that last flight was so exciting. She was being urged to retire by her husband, as was Margot Fonteyn - another drama I watched recently (the BBC version with Anne Marie Duff). I knew that Amelia would go one of two ways. She'd either be like Margot, doing her craft into senior years; or she'd die fairly young doing it. As flying is more dangerous than ballet, I feared for the latter. But then, how else would an aviatrix chose to die? Timothy Treadwell, subject of Grizzly Man, spent a life with bears, died by being mauled by one. I could see that fittingly, Amelia was going to die doing her best attempt yet.
When Hilary's voice came over the clouds, I knew that Amelia did not make it home. There were many lovey words spoken by Hilary over images of the real Amelia, but the phrase I remember ended the cloud speech: "Dreams have no bounds". Amelia said several times that she did not take impossible for an answer.
I went out of the cinema feeling a deep joy - not the misery of Revolutionary Road, or the flatness or lowness or Bright Star. I really did feel bright; the same deep satisfaction and profoundness I feel after My Sister's Keeper.
My overall view of Changeling is also triumph; the feeling I remember most was the desire to stand and clap with the others in the courtroom, that in adversity comes one's greatest achievements, and that Hollywood knows that happy endings do not mean 'happily ever after' - in this world.
Related:
Mamma Mia and Doubt: Two Faces of Meryl Streep
Elspeth Rushbrook
www.myspace.com/elspethr
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