Changeling III Act Structure Breakdown

Changeling
3 Act Structure Breakdown
Directed by Clint Eastwood

with Angelina Jolie, Gattlin Griffith, Michelle Gunn

Plot:
A mother's prayer for her kidnapped son to return home is answered, though it doesn't take long for her to suspect the boy who comes back is not hers. *source: www.imdb.com

Act I

• We meet Protagonist and Secondary Character (Mother & Child), a loving mother and her son, life is good.
• Mom's job calls her in, she can't keep promise to go to movies with son on Saturday, first conflict
• Secondary character is missing, the Protagonist must find her son. This is the great conflict of the film which pushes us into act II, the Protagonist is now in a world without her son. (Plot Point # 1)

Act II

• Protagonist tries to find boy with help of police by calling them, they don't help (1st false victory, falling action)
• Protagonist continues search unsuccessfully, conflict becomes more intense (rising action
• Police call mom, tell her they’ve found boy (false hope/culmination)
• Mom finds out the boy police found is not her son (2nd false victory, falling action, midpoint)
• She fights to find truth, policeman sends her to mental hospital
• She is freed, because the truth is found that it’s not her boy (1st victory, rising action, Plot Point # 2)

Act III

• Protagonist has new goal to get justice for what has happened to her and others put in mental hospital
• Ladies are freed from mental hospital (2nd victory, rising action)
• Policeman gets fired, court case won, murderer sentences to be hung (3rd victory)
• Murderer promises to tell Mom he killed boy, so she can move on, but he doesn’t (all is lost)
• Murderer is hung
• Truth found, boy wasn’t murdered but got away, protagonist has hope her boy is still alive (denouement)