My Darling, My Blood: Million Dollar Baby

Intellectual Conservative ^ | 18 February 2005 | Nicholas Stix

[mrustow]

If you give Million Dollar Baby half a chance, you're gonna cry.

"You're gonna cry," the ticket-seller, a Spanish lady in her late fifties, told me. And she was right.

Million Dollar Baby is about two kinds of hunger: The hunger for glory that gnaws at those who seemingly have no chance at it, and the hunger for the love that bonds a father and a daughter, even if the two are not father and daughter.

Clint Eastwood is hot again. In 2003, his movie Mystic River, in which he did not act, was up for all of the major Oscars, and won Tim Robbins an Academy Award for best supporting actor. (That Oscar may have been a payoff for Robbins' years of leftwing political agitation.) Mystic River, a murder mystery set in Boston, was good, but not as good as its press. Its script, by the usually top-notch Brian Helgeland, was full of red herrings, and contained a scene involving the suspect (Tim Robbins) that, taken in isolation was great, but which contradicted everything else we were shown about the character. Typical for Eastwood's movies, however, the acting was uniformly excellent.

During the early-to-mid 1990s, the man who learned his trade from Sergio Leone and Don Siegel was the best director in the business, turning out three masterpieces in a row: The western, Unforgiven (1992), for which he won Oscars for best director and best picture, and was nominated for best actor; the road/crime story, A Perfect World (1993), which bombed at the box office and was ignored by the Academy (Kevin Costner gave the performance of his career, but it was too late to win back his lost fans); and the story of romance and adultery, The Bridges of Madison County (1995), a commercial and critical success, which however was only nominated for best actress for Meryl Streep's revelatory performance, but which I think should have won a passel of Oscars. Pretty good, all in all, for a guy who got his start playing roustabout trail boss "Rowdy Yates" on the TV western, Rawhide, back in 1959.

After Bridges, Eastwood lost his way. He made the entertaining but lightweight Absolute Power (1997), and deteriorated to the point of the muddled Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (also 1997). He was more effective as a moviemaker in True Crime (1999), but too old for the role of reporter "Steve Everett," in which he botched some good lines. In Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood recaptures that '90's glory, as producer, director, actor and even composer.

Baby is a boxing picture, only the fighter is a girl. With "Maggie McNamara," Hilary Swank paints the most intense portrait of a fighter since Robert DeNiro's Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980). Maggie was born and raised as white trash. With her father dead, the lifelong waitress is burdened with an overweight mother, a street scum convict brother, and a sister that gets by through welfare fraud. She never had a chance. But she makes her own luck ... to a point.

Eastwood's "Frankie Dunn" is the greatest "cut man" in the business, and a sometime manager who often hurts more for his fighters than they do. A devout Catholic, though he doesn't look or preach the part, Frankie goes to mass every morning, prays for his estranged daughter and another female (dead wife? ex-wife?) every night, and grieves over an earlier boxing mishap. Frankie is a difficult man, who terrorizes his young priest with snarky metaphysical questions, to the point of provoking the young man to cuss him out, and tell him to skip mass.

Frankie: Father, that was a great sermon ... made me weep.

Father Horvak: What's confusing you this week?

Frankie: Oh, it's the same old, "one God-three God" thing.

Father Horvak: Frankie, most people figure out by kindergarten that it's about faith.
Frankie: Is it sort of like snap, crackle, and pop, all rolled into one big box?

Meanwhile, Maggie just wants a chance. Frankie tells Maggie, "I don't train girls," but she is not to be denied.

With "Scrap Iron's" help, each comes to fill the void in the other's life.

Some critics, like the Daily News' Jack Mathews, have said that Eastwood's Frankie Dunn is the performance of a lifetime. They're right. But Eastwood will almost surely lose the best actor Oscar to Jamie Foxx for Ray. (Since I have yet to see Ray, I can't say who deserves it more.) Eastwood is up for best director, and as producer, for best picture. His main competition in those categories is director Martin Scorcese, and producers Michael Mann and Graham King, all of The Aviator. (Aviator is up for eleven awards to Baby's seven; many observers think Scorcese will win based not on quality, but sentiment and memories of his superior earlier work.)

I had never seen Hilary Swank act before, but somehow I felt as if I knew her work, before I even entered the theater. All I knew of her was her pathetic Oscar acceptance speech for Boys Don't Cry (1999), when she pleaded with the world "to embrace diversity!," the winning appearance she gave a few months ago on a late night talk show (probably Letterman), and the ads for Baby. Sometimes you can tell in seconds that a performer has no talent -- think Sean Combs, Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck. Much more rarely, in just a moment, you can tell that a performer has it, whatever "it" is. From those promos, I knew that Hilary Swank had it.

Anyone who was old enough to know what was going on during the 1970s, beheld a colossus in the young Robert DeNiro. He was both a life force and the hungriest actor in the business. DeNiro was always challenging himself, and always willing to sacrifice more for a role than anyone else, whether it was spending weeks learning Sicilian for The Godfather Part II (1974); learning the saxophone for New York, New York (1977); or training for months before filming, and then putting on 60 pounds in the middle of filming Raging Bull, in order to play boxer Jake LaMotta, both as middleweight champ and as a fat, middle-aged, has-been. Hilary Swank, who reportedly put on 20 pounds in training for Baby, has that sort of hunger, ambition, and talent. Her ring work is every bit as good as DeNiro's (maybe better), and in and out of the ring, she will break your heart. She's a prohibitive favorite to win her second best actress Oscar. Behold the new colossus!

Morgan Freeman's one-eyed, old pug, "Eddie 'Scrap Iron' Dupris," has been like a wife to Frankie for about thirty years. Eastwood exploits Freeman both on-camera and as narrator, which is a great advantage for any movie (think Se7en and The Shawshank Redemption). As narrator, Freeman's pipes sound the worse for wear, but he still uses his voice better than anyone else in the business, managing somehow to give brilliant, clean, line readings in an even tone, yet without falling into a monotone. (Compare that to lazy George Clooney's monotone.) And Freeman has a stage presence where he can command attention, while doing "nothing." He is physically convincing as an old man who fought 109 prize fights, and wasn't retired until the age of 39. His "Scrap Iron" and Frankie trade barbs with the dark humor of survivors who have lost much, but who have not thrown in the towel. Such a dark movie requires as much humor as possible. I'm reminded of O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten, and the gallows humor of the ill-fated "James Tyrone Jr." and "Josie Hogan" (the late Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst).

Freeman is up for best supporting actor, his fourth nomination (following Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, and Shawshank), and is favored to finally win it. I hope he does.

The picture has a lean, powerful screenplay by Paul Haggis (thirtysomething, EZ Streets), who does dark better than anyone, based on the stories Rope Burns, by the late F.X. Toole, himself an old cut man (and surely, like Frankie, an Irish Catholic -- Francis Xavier?).

While Million Dollar Baby was filmed in color, for much of the movie, you wouldn't know it. As shot by Tom Stern, it is a study in shadow and light. It has a powerful yet restrained score, also by Eastwood, that works on the viewer like Larry Holmes' jab, and which, like Stern's cinematography, inexplicably was not nominated for an Oscar.

Eastwood used much of the production crew that has been his mainstay for years. (He founded his own production company, Malpaso, over thirty years ago.) Thus, the editing is by Joel Cox, the production design by Henry Bumstead, and Lennie Niehaus, who used to also score Eastwood's movies, arranged and conducted his score. You've come a long way, Rowdy!

If you give Million Dollar Baby half a chance, like the ticket-seller lady said, you're gonna cry.

New York-based freelancer Nicholas Stix has written for Toogood Reports, Middle American News, the New York Post, Daily News, American Enterprise, Insight, Chronicles, Newsday and many other publications. His recent work is collected at The Critical Critic.

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[satchmodog9]

Took me a while and I had to get off my rear and get a photobucket account.

[madprof98]

Twain's point is that Huck WON'T go to hell, but is willing to do so if that's what convention tells him.

Yes, of course. It's an ironic critique of religiously based social convention--and really of religion itself, which Twain rejected. Strikingly original in its time, it's become a cliche now.

The point in Million Dollar Baby . . . is that Eastwood's character DOES doom himself by his religious belief . . .

Yeah. But since viewers know that the character's actions were morally right, that means the religious beliefs are wrong. Shades of Twain? Of course. Intentionally, I suppose.

[mrustow]

It's a movie. It's not an actual murder (which I believe euthanasia is, for all the FReeper busybodies). Saying one's against this movie for that is like the libs who think "feeling" something about an issue is equivalent to actually doing something about it. Same thing here.

See it, don't see it, no one else cares. 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?

"My dear, it's only a movie. Don't take it too seriously."--Alfred Hitchcock

These people hate movies. Heck, they don't even go to the movies or rent them. They just listen to Michael Medved, and scream bloody murder, when he tells them to. He hates movies too, but at least he watches them, before condemning them. But you're being much too subtle for them.

[Darkwolf377]

I think you've put it in a nutshell.

The very best, most moral movies are not sunny, happy "watch this guy do good!" movies but those showing people in moral dilemnas. The opposite of a dramatic situation is one in which the "right" choice is plain as day and the hero makes it without reservation and that's it.

The essence of drama is conflict. The best conflicts come from inside the hero--"man in conflict with himself". Movies about such conflicts that show someone making decisions that some people will agree with and others disagree with, in which the hero is conflicted even after arriving to his or her decision, are potentially the very best dramas.

I enjoyed much of Mystic River, but found the drama bungled by the end--SPOILERS AHEAD--he "right" choices are plain as day, and the climax is more about certain information not getting to certain characters, and the evidence that puts one character on the spot is pretty lame (the night one character gets killed just so happens to be the same night another character kills someone for the first time in his life? Uh, yeah...). Having said that, the feelings that come out as a result of Penn's suspicion and Robbins's decades-long anger are powerful.

END SPOILERS There's nothing like that in MDB. There is no way for the character to hide, he has to make a tough decision, and sacrifices his own moral code out of a complex love for another character. THAT is the essence of good drama.

People who change their moral points of view based on a freaking Hollywood fictional movie are probably too stupid to know how to vote, so I don't know what all the whining is about. As I wrote before, the same people probably have no problem watching Mel Gibson shoot up thirty people a movie and don't get all bent claiming a Lethal Weapon movie is "advertising murder".

[mrustow]

I think Eastwood may have gotten too much credit for Mystic River, due to his reputation, and the lack of serious, non-FX-dominated dramas that year.

If these yahoos get Eastwood some free publicity, maybe it will generate more interest and ticket sales. Then will their agitations have had some value, in spite of themselves.

[Irish Rose]

Thanks for your informative reply.

[mrustow]

I agree with Stix far more than I disagree with him but he digresses quite a bit from Million Dollar Baby. How can an actor be a life force as he would have you think of DeNiro? It is a silly appellation to hang on an actor. Clint Eastwood is an amazingly complex guy; I really admire him and his work but what people are saying about him and his latest film dismays me. It reminds me of what is simultaneously happening to Tom Wolfe. Too many people, against all they have ever seen, expect to see an artists' career as forever ascendent. Recently I saw a symposium on Wolfe's Charlotte Simmons on C-SPAN where some of the participants criticized him for conjuring up a fictitious take on modern college life. Perhaps Charlotte Simmons isn't the priceless gem that The Right Stuff was, or Million Dollar Baby isn't the work of art that Unforgiven was but why let that disturb your appreciation of what these two genuine auteurs are offering us? Yes, these two elderly men may have lost a few miles off their fastballs but they still possess enough finesse to get the batters out.

The Oscars can't be taken seriously. My only interest in them is to ogle the comely young actresses doing the red carpet bit.

I just reprinted your post, because I like what you had to say.

[AmishDude]

It's a drama. And a pretty good one, too.

I suppose you could say the same about Triumph of the Will.

[Non-Sequitur]

I suppose you could say the same about Triumph of the Will.

If you say so. I've never seen it.

[AmishDude]

There might be something you'd want to know about Triumph before you see it . . . but don't let me spoil it for you.

[mrustow]

RE: Catholic church supporting pro-euthanasia film Million Dollar Baby - just as this reviewer repeats the carnard that this is a movie about boxing and not about mercy killing - the Jesuit magazine America review of MDB couldn't praise it enough for its content and 'message'.

Pretty sick.

People who condemn things they know nothing about, have zero credibility.

[mrustow]

Was Dirty Harry a pro-shoot-people-in-the-head-with-a-44-magnum movie?

Dirty Harry was not promoted as a romantic comedy.

Eastwood didn't misrepresent his movie, you did.

[mrustow]

Some FReepers seem to confuse the quality and skills of acting, directing, writing, etc with the message of the film itself. I can be impressed with the quality of a film and recommend it even if the message is one that I totally disagree with. Films that make someone think about their own convictions are usually good films to see no matter what the message might be. So I have no problem with a film like MDB, because in my mind it validates my position that these characters made morally wrong decisions. On the other hand, a film like F911 was pure crap because it was based on lies and distortions of historical facts rather than opinion. While I can tolerate liberal opinions on the screen, I can't stomach deliberate lying.

Bump to that.

[mrustow]

I didn't know anything about the pro-euthanasia message in this film but made the conscious decision NOT to see it because any picture about women getting socked in the face for a living (even if it is willingly) does nothing for me.

Zip, zilch, nada!

I have no use for females boxing, either, but made an exception, because of who made the movie. But the movie has no pro-euthanasia message. Don't let the yahoos fool you. They didn't even see the movie.

Everyone should go see "Beyond the Sea". Now THAT is a good movie.

I heard that Kevin Spacey did his own singing, and even sounded like a reincarnation of Bobby Darin. It never occurred to me before the movie came out, but Spacey resembles Darin. I look forward to renting it.

[mrustow]

I wonder why that film hasn't gotten as much criticism.

Because it wasn't nominated for any Oscars?

[AmishDude]

No, Eastwood's film Dirty Harry was correctly promoted as a film exploring the moral and ethical conflicts torturing a hard-nosed police officer.

[mrustow]

Frankie: Oh, it's the same old, "one God-three God" thing.

Father Horvak: Frankie, most people figure out by kindergarten that it's about faith.

Frankie: Is it sort of like snap, crackle, and pop, all rolled into one big box?

Gotta love those straw man debates in movies. Ever see a shamrock, Clint? Next St. Patrick's day, ponder how he explained the Trinity to the Irish.

I look forward to reading your more intelligent remarks, after you have seen the flick. Meanwhile, I question your assumptions.

[NHResident]

Those who are ignorant of facts and events should keep their comments to themselves. Displays of ignorance only serve to embarrass the audience.

[mrustow]

You're comparing Clint Eastwood to Josef Goebbels?!
You're comparing Clint Eastwood to Josef Goebbels?!
You're comparing Clint Eastwood to Josef Goebbels?!

You don't know beans about either man -- or movies.

[mrustow]

Oops! I may have unconsciously plagiarized you!