Saw "Million Dollar Baby" last week. Again, great acting jobs (Hillary Swank probably deserves another Oscar); great direction by Clint Eastwood. It is a very well-done movie. But it was horribly depressing. And I didn't get the point. I thought there were too many themes in the movie: Was it a film about a man who was searching for faith, but who in the end risks losing his salvation? Was it about two small time nobodies who together achieved something that was larger than either one of them could have achieved on their own? Was it a film about going all out to achieve something big, regardless of the cost? Was it a film about a father who lost a daughter, who then gained a daughter, who then lost her as well? [WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!]...Was it a propaganda piece for euthanasia? The competing themes collided to leave kind of a mish-mash at the end. A well-done movie, but not a great one.
Melancholy? The truth that is covered by the movie wasn't quite as bad. Sylvia Llewellyn Davies actually attended the opening of Peter Pan, accompanied by her husband who was already dead in the movie. There are four boys in the movie, but the Llewelly-Davies actually had 5, with the fifth son born after Peter Pan was performed. But where the melancholy kicks in is after the time covered by the movie is over. The oldest boy, George Llewellyn-Davies died in action in World War I. The middle boy, Michael, was a suicide in college. The youngest boy, Peter, was a suicide as an adult. And the character played by Dustin Hoffman, Charles Frohman, died on the Lusitania.
Two other pieces of trivia. James Barrie invented the name 'Wendy' for Peter Pan. And at the end of the movie, after the people have seen the play, there is one lady who says to the youngest boy "You're Peter Pan". The lady who played that is Laura Duguid, the daughter of Nicholas Llewellyn-Davies, the youngest son who is not featured in the movie.
RE: "Was it a film about a man who was searching for faith, but who in the end risks losing his salvation? Was it about two small time nobodies who together achieved something that was larger than either one of them could have achieved on their own? Was it a film about going all out to achieve something big, regardless of the cost? Was it a film about a father who lost a daughter, who then gained a daughter, who then lost her as well?"
You did a good job of identifying the themes of the movie, actually. I agree that MDB was "about" all of these to a certain extent, with each mini-theme coming to the surface in their own turn. Just like in life, there's no one clear message to take from it. I thought that MDB worked all the better for that than if it has another simple-minded (or as I like to call it, "Boston Public"), TV-movie "lesson" to preach.