MovieChat Forums > The Changeling (1980) Discussion > Joseph's Medal

Joseph's Medal

posted 10 years ago by catbookss
8 replies | jump to latest

This may have already been discussed on this board, but if it has, I couldn't find a thread about it.

Why did the father leave the medal on Joseph's body? Very handy for John, of course, so he had proof the skeleton was Joseph's.

Carmichael would have had to have carried the boy's body down three flights of stairs, put into a carriage, and then driven quite a ways to the well on the ranch property. Plenty of time to think about the medal, and other details of covering up the murder.

Joseph was naked in the tub, so it's not like the medal would have been easy for him to overlook. Not to mention he had to go to the trouble of having a duplicate made for the changeling to wear. It would have been a lot easier for him to simply remove it from the body, which would have also made him safe from discovery if the body had been found.

Other people have mentioned the idea of a prequel, and I quite like that idea. It would be a challenge to make Joseph's father somehow sympathetic in a convincing way, and that he'd left the medal on poor Joseph because he felt he had no choice but to kill his own son, yet also felt remorse.

[–] OmegaWolf747 10 years ago

I don't think he felt a stitch of remorse for what he'd done.

As for why the medal was left with the body and a duplicate made, chalk it up to a plot hole. I always imagine Carmichael overlooking the medal and not thinking of it until the body was already at the bottom of the well.

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House. My room. Cant walk. My medal. My father. Father, dont!

[–] catbookss 10 years ago

I could go with plot hole, although I do like the idea of him remembering only after Joseph's body is at the bottom of the well.

Unless Carmichael was an actual socio/psychopath, he'd have had to have some amount of remorse. After all, he'd not only committed murder, but he'd murdered his own son! Of course there's nothing to say he wasn't a socio- or psychopath. I really would love to see a well done prequel to find out.

[–] OmegaWolf747 10 years ago

Me too. Perhaps start off with the murder and Carmichael fleeing to Switzerland with the orphan, then fast forward a couple years to the Bernard family moving in.

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House. My room. Cant walk. My medal. My father. Father, dont!

[–] catbookss 10 years ago

I would love to see it start with before Carmichael decided he had no recourse but to kill his own child. I'd like to know more about him, his relationship with Joseph, and his wife. For my tastes, it's too easy to make him a simple villain who decided "Oh well, I want the money and property, so I'll just have to off my own child and find a replacement to stand in for him."

I also want to know more about Cora and the Bernard family. What really happened? Was Cora haunted by Joseph? Is that why she walked out in front of the coal cart and was killed, or did Joseph have nothing to do with it?

[–] Sewaat 10 years ago

I thought it was just an act of carelessness on Richard's part. He was rushing to get the job done. Because as soon as he did away with Joseph, he had to quickly get overseas with the replacement and set everything up with him. And as anyone knows, you don't consider tiny details when you're trying to get something done as fast as possible. Now, perhaps I'm reading into this too much but I believe that his mind was so singularly focused on the goal of securing his wealth and linage that he didn't even conceive that the Medal was going to be so significant.

And even if Richard had taken it into account, he probably assumed that his plan was so well thought out no one would ever discover the truth, let alone Joseph's body with the medal at the bottom of a well. And the ruse did work astonishingly well for 70 years. So I don't think it's a plot hole.

All things once are things forever, soul once living lives forever.

[–] catbookss 10 years ago

It could have been carelessness, him being focused on his goal of successfully murdering Joseph, spiriting away his body, and getting the changeling out of the country.

But as I said earlier, Joseph was nude in the tub, wearing only the medal, which specifically identified him. Seems like an obvious and important thing to simply overlook. If he'd had clothes on, it would have been more understandable because it wouldn't have been visible and therefore not in Carmichael's immediate mind.

To me, only someone very reckless or stupid would overlook something that absolutely identifies a body, assuming their plan is so tight, that it wouldn't be important to remove it. The body was in his well, on his property, with the identifying medal. If the body had been discovered, as it well could have been (a neighbor or servant having seen him that night), it would have been a slam dunk, and Carmichael would have lost everything, including his life. The stakes were too high, and he had to have been aware of that, unless he was an idiot.

[–] Sewaat 10 years ago

You have a really good point. But I don't believe Richard Carmichael was an idiot. There's a huge difference between arrogance and stupidity. And his arrogance was his downfall; in wrongly assuming that his plan was flawless, he let himself overlook a major detail. And it's highly ironic, considering that he wasn't willing to take a chance with Joseph's life but he felt he could still afford to leave behind a piece of the evidence and get away with it.

But now that I think about it, yes...the medal is significant in proving that was Joseph's body. But the fact alone that John and Claire even now know that Joseph once existed was something that Richard clearly hadn't planned on. And how could he? When you murder someone, you don't assume that their spirit is going to come back to haunt that house years after their death. Unless you strongly believe in that sort of thing, which obviously he did not. Otherwise, he very likely would have been more careful about hiding the evidence.

But when it all comes down to it, the movie just needed something for John to discover in order to convince the senator that he was an imposter. Simple as that.

All things once are things forever, soul once living lives forever.

[–] catbookss 10 years ago

But when it all comes down to it, the movie just needed something for John to discover in order to convince the senator that he was an imposter. Simple as that.

Yes, I think that's really all it was: a plot device. They had to have some way for John to identify the body as Joseph's. There weren't any dental records back then, so they had to think of something else.

I suppose it's that I liked the movie so much, I wanted it to be tightly written in all aspects, particularly on pivotal points.