Why Is It Called a Million Dollar Baby
I know a lot of people don't think much of Million Dollar Baby . The screenwriter was a long fourth dimension Scientologist and ancestral on us the barbarism called Crash . There'southward a grouchy priest who says wise, grouchy things. And shit, if that own't enough, ol' Morgan Freeman himself narrates the proceedings. The film as well won a bunch of Oscars. And Hilary Swank is the star.
It's been over five years since Babe came out and as the years pass I think it'south making a pretty decent case for itself every bit the greatest American film of the last 20-v years. It'south a terrifically disguised movie because yous recollect you're getting the female Rocky . And and then when it does get tragic, peradventure y'all're thinking Brian'south Song or Bang The Drum Slowly . Simply what makes Baby , I feel, a total masterpiece, is that it'due south all glued together past blazingly clear and subtle metaphorical writing and directing. Unlike a lot of movies, nosotros are not just watching a story unfold scene by scene. At that place are like, actual symbols and themes. Every moment has about five layers.
What happened to metaphorical writing? Mumblecore and Neo-neo realism movies don't carp with it because they're also concerned with the flatness and ordinariness of everyday reality. There may be political undertones, simply that'southward every bit far as information technology goes. Information technology'south all literal. The new studio films—there's too many test screenings for anything to be made other than a sad pitch stretched out over 120 minutes. The studio movies are just trailers now—we all know that. Only former lions like Bill Goldman and Paul Schrader bother with metaphor anymore. And the studios don't really bother with Goldman or Schrader, then…
Hither's the poet W.S. Merwin: "We alive the shadow of our lives. What we're living is metaphor." Our bodies are representations of the universe, each torso telling us a petty dissimilar information about the galaxy. Our kisses are manifestations of dreams. The earth itself is a concrete expression of our commonage dream. And when yous get punched in the face, in the ring, y'all're battling storm clouds, ex-lovers, depression, heartbreak, genetics. You lot get cut? Inquire Sylvia Plath about that. She might tell you about the blood issuing from her cut thumb to the running of a million soldiers, "redcoats, every one."
A picture with no metaphor is only a plot where characters do a bunch of shit and then but delight run the fucking end credits so I can leave. Go encounter Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and yous get the idea. It'due south the desert without lions, orange juice without pulp. It's about cipher, ways goose egg. 1000000 Dollar Babe does have a story. But the story is not all that original. The story is no nifty shakes. What takes it up to the exceptional rank is that every scene is packed with levels of symbols. And yous don't notice this consciously, because Clint is so good. But the movie just starts to work on you. It starts to wear you down without you even knowing what'south happening.
The script was adapted from battle trainer/writer F.10. Toole's Rope Burns . And while that book is a great collection of short stories, the credit has to get mostly to Haggis and Eastwood for lassoing information technology all together into metaphor. Every scene is nearly vulnerability. Most every line. It's a picture near not getting hurt. Or people who did get injure and are protecting themselves from getting hurt again. Or people who are willing to get hurt to reach for a goal, take that chance.
There are are plenty of neat movies nigh this stuff. Casablanca . The Conversation . But I don't think I ever saw ane as relentless every bit Meg Dollar Baby . That'south all it's about. Over and over again. Every infinitesimal of it. Do you shelter yourself? Volition y'all hazard your neck? Volition you die? Morgan Freeman has holes in his socks. Clint Eastwood can't stand it. Can't stand that Freeman's toes are exposed. Buy new socks, he tells Freeman. Don't expose yourself—you might get marred. Every little moment is virtually this one thing.
"Protect yourself at all times," Clint'south Frankie repeats again and once again to his fighters—the style only a wounded, cautious man would. But every bit Freeman says, upon hearing of a tough bout refusal by Frankie, "You lot just protected yourself out of a championship!"
Are you brave? Are you lot susceptible? Are you always in control? Can you surrender, let go? Volition yous hazard impairment for love? Take on menace to express your truth? In Meg Dollar Baby there are monsters and demons everywhere. Not but the crooked fighters in the ring. In that location are bookies, hoods, ghosts, ghoulish gamblers. And when Swank's Maggie visits her family and they treat her like trash—then we meet what she's really up confronting. Herself. Her own cocky-esteem.
In order to pull this off, Eastwood had to create a world all unto itself. It's not the '50s. It's non the '90s. It's not the 2000s. It's America, certainly. But more than that it takes place in the listen. The listen of Maggie. The mind of Frankie. The mind of Morgan Freeman's Scrap. And nosotros see these minds made manifest, like W.South. Merwin talked about. The diner that Frankie goes to and has heavenly pie in—that's not actually a diner. That's a identify of grace and loss. The identify of losing gracefully. The diner might every bit well be called dignity. Just like Frankie Dunn'south gym is not a gym so much as a battleground for letting one's guard down (I know that's not what battle gyms are usually known for). People at the gym are scarred. Dunn has lost his girl's trust. Something bad happened and he's been hiding out. But when Maggie comes in, the gym is transformed. It becomes a place of redemption. A identify where mayhap y'all can work up the audacity to hazard your life again. To risk your centre again.
All this might sound like a lot. Like a lot of melodramatic hubbub. But Eastwood's jazz hand is and then steady and absurd, the moving picture plays like life. Like life really is—when the curtain lifts. "There'due south the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you," Fleck says at one point. And that magic is not glamorous. That magic is not shiny or sparkly. Information technology's the magic of stealing leftover meat off a table when you're waiting tables. Information technology's that lonely magic we all know, when nosotros're alone, edifice our dreams, drinking the morning coffee, praying at our bed, riding the bus late at night. We practice this magic, or nosotros fade abroad and die. "Working the purse, dominate."
The music is more often than not just fingers on a piano. There's inappreciably any color in the whole picture. People talk, simply they become correct to the indicate and so they leave the room.
On top of all this, information technology is, in my opinion, the best picture I've always seen nigh the instructor/pupil relationship.
FRANKIE
If I take you on–
MAGGIE
I promise I'll work so hard!
FRANKIE
You don't question me. And I'm gonna try to forget the fact that y'all're a girl.
This goes dorsum to the mind aspect of the picture show. Because, through training, Maggie and Frankie are going to become one mind. She is non going to exist a daughter anymore than he is going to be a man. They are going to enter into the place of oneness. The place where their mutual goal is so potent that it devastates duality, sexuality, individualism.
MAGGIE
You lot gonna leave me?
FRANKIE
Never.
He gives her the fighting nickname Mo Cuishle.
Maggie and Frankie go their shot at the million bucks. A muddied boxer called Blueish Carry sucker punches Maggie. Bluish Behave, a former prostitute, knows Maggie has too much love and too much uppercut. And then Maggie falls onto the corner chair and gets paralyzed from the cervix down.
In the next to terminal scene, Frankie has to go put Maggie to sleep. She'south wasting away in a bloody bed and is begging to exist released. He can't let her get. But he tin can't stand up to come across her in such pain, withering. By holding on and trying to protect her, protect himself, proceed them surviving—he is killing them both. And so somehow he gathers himself. And he sneaks into the infirmary, in the nighttime. He goes into his trainer's bag, takes out a long needle, administers an overdose of adrenaline. He tells Maggie, while injecting her, what the name Mo Cuishle ways. Information technology means "My Pulse."
The characters in this movie are not individuals. They're office of one body. We could probably get into why metaphor has left movies. It's probably a reflection of society and the vanishing of poetry itself. But that'southward another article. This ane's just almost putting our hood on, running every bit fast as we can, and trying our best to knock out The Blue Deport. Mayhap we volition, or peradventure we'll get killed. Only can y'all kill something that is continued to everything?
In the concluding scene we see Frankie through a foggy window at the diner that he's bought. He's retired from the boxing life. Or at to the lowest degree it looks similar Frankie. At that place are teardrops on the window, information technology's difficult to run into actually. The truth is, we don't know what nosotros're looking at. A phantasm? And then the moving-picture show ends.
— Noah Buschel
Source: https://www.hammertonail.com/editorial/essays/noah-buschel-on-million-dollar-baby/
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