No, ‘The Changeling’ is not a rereading of ‘At the Bottom of the Stairs’, although the original title of the film that Peter Medak released in 1980 was exactly that. In reality, the title of the new Apple TV+ series refers to a figure that has its roots in European folklore. It is an imposter child, a creature with which the fairies replace the human baby, without the parents realizing until it is too late.
Despite its dark atmosphere and the enigmatic voice-over that flies over all the chapters of the proposal, the first minutes of ‘The Changeling’ have a strangely luminous character. The series plays with the idea of a fairy tale that, little by little, with the development of the plot, ends up mutating into a nightmare. The action of the first episode takes place in two time frames. First in 2010, where the protagonist of the story is introduced, Apollo (LaKeith Stanfield), a New York bookseller who visits flea markets in search of old and important editions of classic books. One day, flipping through volumes in a Queens library, the librarian’s way of handling a problem catches his attention and asks for a date. Before saying yes, Emma (Clark Backo) will reject him up to six times.
The story is very similar, in fact, to what Apollo’s parents lived through in the late sixties. Brian (Jared Abrahamson) was the probation officer for Lillian’s (Adina Porter) boss, a secretary at a modeling agency, and he fell madly in love with her as soon as he saw her, but she resisted saying that she didn’t date white men, until which he finally ended up accepting. Both relationships run in parallel in that first chapter of the fiction, with the first dates and the first confidences that refer to tortuous pasts and traumas that have not yet been overcome, judging by certain recurring nightmares. Emma’s parents died in a fire when she was only five years old, while her father abandoned Apollo when she was four years old.
Love seems to triumph because Apollo decides to wait six long months for the return of Emma, who has been traveling in Brazil, and the couple ends up getting married and having a baby. That’s when things inevitably begin to go wrong. First with the usual difficulties of a first-time couple: the fatigue that makes everything muddy, the problems when breastfeeding, the visits to the pediatrician, the jealousy because the little one seems to be better with one of the two, the pressures so much self-imposed as well as those of the family to provide the best nutrition and education and the best care for the baby, the scarce eight weeks of maternity leave; then with the arrival of some strange messages on Emma’s cell phone that drive her crazy until one day, after a terrible incident, the woman, convinced that the little boy is not her son, disappears.
A cumbersome series
Through this mystery and throughout its eight episodes – so far Apple TV+ has served five chapters – the narrative, very slowly, becomes darker and darker in this fable that ends up successfully mixing witchcraft, sects, traditions. African tales and Nordic fairy tales with which, just as ‘Servant’ did, another fiction from the Cupertino catalogue, it addresses issues such as postpartum depression or the need to always be a better father than those who have preceded you.
Visually careful, like the bulk of the Annapurna and Apple Studios productions, although with some questionable decisions – that fashion of playing with the depth of field and placing elements in the plane out of focus arbitrarily should end now –, the The problem with ‘The Changeling’ is that it doesn’t seem to have a very clear idea of where it’s going and, despite the efforts of LaKeith Stanfield and Clark Backo, who are exceptional in their work, it’s easy for the viewer to lose interest in such a cumbersome development. Furthermore, it takes a lot of effort to start.
Fiction generates a certain concern and anguish but it is better digested if you think of it as a fantasy story rather than as one of horror. After all, the novel of the same name on which it is based was listed by ‘Time’ magazine as one of the hundred best fantasy novels of all time.
Curiously, its author, Victor LaValle, professor at the School of the Arts at Columbia University, provides the voice-over for the project, reinforcing that idea of a fairy tale and underpinning a plot that tends to jump in time quite often. , perhaps with the intention of making it seem more complex than it ultimately is.
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