Posted on 02/18/2005 1:10:19 PM PST by mrustow
As you'd know if you'd seen the movie, Eastwood's character isn't asking this question with any sort of sincerity. He's yanking the priest's chain as he does, apparently, every day when he goes to mass. The priest is on to him, though, and doesn't put up with it.
The priest also tells Eastwood's character that the only people who show up for mass every day, as he does, are people who can't forgive themselves for something. We never learn what Eastwood's done in the past. It may be something to do with the daughter he writes to every week and who returns the letters unread. But Eastwood's character is clearly damned, if only by himself. I think that part of the reason he's able to do what he does at the end is that he feels his soul is already lost.
I didn't. I've just shot, edited, and sound mixed film and video for my own independent films and short subjects and had my film writings published. You go off and take courses, I actually make films.
Nice of you to completely dodge my point and instead make a silly uninformed wisecrack with zero discussion of the point I made, thus proving my point about your sort.
The movie was true to the written story. It was well told, well cast and well acted.
It was not a "message movie". It was a hard luck story and about love. One of the best I have ever seen. Man- -people are now comparing Clint Eastwood to Leni Reifenstall. This is nothing short of idiotic.
I did respond to the point you made, but evidently you didn't understand the response. Anyone who imagines there is no dramatic conflict in truly effective propaganda fails to understand how propaganda works. Of course, there is conflict. It helps the viewers to get over their own misgivings about whatever it is the propagandist wants us to buy into.
I saw it last night. I teared up mostly when Swank character starts having boxing success. I expected to feel manipulated at the end (euthanasia) and be angry. I wasn't.
Nicholas Stix is clearly a moral idiot. Clint Eastwood has made a great many movies that are terrific, and profitable as well. "Bridges of Madison County," which he thinks should have won numerous awards, certainly wasn't one of them. It was a commercial success but a moral failure, a piece of dimestore trash.
"Million Dollar Baby" is also trash. It may very well make a lot of money, but morally speaking Clint Eastwood might as well have played the part of an abortionist or a Nazi euthanasia freak.
Since mention of the Nazis seems distracting, consider another film beloved of the Hollywood elite, "The Cider House Rules." Was there conflict? Of course. In fact, the main character had to be convinced in the most dramatic way possible that abortion was at times truly necessary. And was it propaganda? John Irving pretty much said so. And anyone who thought otherwise is probably someone who already thought abortion was necessary before the film came out for it. I think that's the case here too. The folks who have no problem with "Million Dollar Baby" are the folks who have no problem with euthanasia.
Should I see the movie that reports to be one thing "A boxing movie" but is about another "pro-euhtenasia", that the LIBs are falling all over themselves for?
Obviously, from the dialog in the article, it is also anti-Catholic as well.
Let me just rush out and drop $11 for a ticket and $7 for concessions so Hollywood can keep bombarding me with their left-wing agenda. - sarcasm
This was your response to my point:HUH??? I'm just hoping you didn't do Film Studies in college. In any case, check out Propaganda in Nazi Germany for a thoughtful commentary on the role of films, some of them technically brilliant (and DRAMATIC) in shaping the consciousness of the Third Reich.
Now where exactly did I say there was no technical brilliance or drama in propaganda? I didn't understand your answer because it was to a point I never made.
" Anyone who imagines there is no dramatic conflict in truly effective propaganda fails to understand how propaganda works."
When did I say there was no dramatic conflict in truly effective propaganda?
"Of course, there is conflict. It helps the viewers to get over their own misgivings about whatever it is the propagandist wants us to buy into."
You've invented a straw man and then claimed I didn't understand your answer. I understood it just fine. You just didn't understand my original point and so you made up a point so you could push your uninformed views on film.
Maybe you should approach a serious post with a careful reading before you start with the snide cracks about "film school: with someone who knows more about film that you ever will. Posting a link to someone else's writing about propaganda so you can pose as someone who knows something about a subject will only get you laughed at. Inventing strawmen as you have just makes you look like a fool looking for a fight, and stepping in it when you try to show up someone who's actually worked with film, sparky ;).
You really should look at what a film IS instead of what you want it to be to make your point. Million Dollar Baby would be propaganda if the Eastwood character were pro-euthenasia, or if he were against it and then thought it was good after having a part in it. It doesn't; it says he is condemned by his personal religion for doing that. Show me the Nazi propaganda that tells its followers "If you do this you are condemning your soul to damnation."
By your logic the people who liked The Passion are pro-crucifixion. I mean, it shows the crucifixion as a good thing, something willingly entered into, right?
For those ready to scream and shout: I am NOT saying that those who liked The Passion are pro-crucifixion--note the first words "By your logic".
Why is it that if someone doesn't care to see a particular film, doesn't like the latest movies, or doesn't like what Hollywood is putting out these days is considered dumb, prude, or not with it?
It seems to me that people that are obsessed with movies (especially in the NYC area) and funding Hollywood really don't have much of a life outside of film.
They love to live in fantasy land. I mean, seeing a film once in a while is good but some people go way overboard. Films and TV are so overrated.
There's more to life than sitting at home and waiting for the latest NetFlix package to arrive.
Here is where you said it, back in post #10:
But judge it as a movie, not as a pro-euthanasia screed, because if it were that there would be no drama in the decision--if he's doing something the movie's point of view says is a good, right thing, why is it shown as a dramatic decision?Perhaps you didn't mean what you said, but that is in fact what you said, not some "straw man" I concocted to put down a distinguished film critic like yourself.
So.... do you ever read movie reviews? If so, why?
It's a take-off on Mark Twain. Remember Huck Finn's "Then I'll go to hell!" when he takes the side of the runaway slave, Jim. Twain's point was that the character Huck takes the moral high ground by rejecting the (in this case, racial) conventions of his society. The idea became something of a cliche, and it is on that cliche that "Million Dollar Baby" rests.
All that said, while I found The Cider House Rules to be awful propaganda, I do not think that of Million Dollar Baby. I think it an honest question whether the Clint Eastwood character might act in that way.
Uh, where did I say there was no dramatic conflict in truly effective propaganda?
You can keep up the snide comments all you want, but where did I say it? I didn't.
READ what I wrote:"not as a pro-euthanasia screed, because if it were that there would be no drama IN THE DECISION."
That does not say there is no drama in propaganda. It says if it were propaganda there would be no drama in this one particular MOMENT.
You really, really should read what I wrote, not what you wish I wrote so you could make your silly point. You look like an idiot because you keep insisting I said something I never said, and the proof is right there. I was talking about the drama in one point of the whole script. Never said there was no drama in propaganda.
Stick to whatever it is you can do well, 'cuz it sure ain't debating. Or film.
In other words, you can't. Thank you for your response.
It appears you have a habit of tossing out the label 'hater' as casually (and inappropriately) as the libs do.
BTW, I used to teach film students. One of the main problems with them was that they didn't read much and didn't care to read much. In that respect, they are like so many of the "artists" today who do not recognize propaganda because the only artwork with which they are familiar (their own and that of their friends) is hopelessly propagandistic.
Man, you're as bad a literary critic as you are a film critic. Twain's point is that Huck WON'T go to hell, but is willing to do so if that's what convention tells him.
The point in Million Dollar Baby--which you either didn't see or didn't grasp--is that Eastwood's character DOES doom himself by his religious belief, just as his character DOES doom himself in Unforgiven by returning to the ways he turned from to please his wife. If MDB were propaganda using Twain's narrative technique, we would see a scene in which Freeman or another character saying "He doesn't know that the church actually believes euthanasia is ok." But the point is not that he is actually torturing himself over an ultimately correct decision (as is Huck) but that he is making a decision which by his beliefs is sinful.
You might want to actually SEE the movie before stepping out on a limb like this. And get a Reader's Guide to Twain. Bye now. ;)
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