‘Tough ain’t enough’, the words in Clint Eastwood’s sonorous voice from his latest film Million Dollar Baby hum inside you hours after you have left the darkened dingy theatre with a bad back. Aware beforehand of the subject the film dealt with (due to the Oscar hype and the ensuing controversies) didn’t help to soften the blow it delivered, which made you mentally numb and dizzy.
As you start dissecting the movie, the words of the actor-director take up a new connotation, as if he was warning you that being tough won’t be enough to digest what he is going to show you, so garner your higher faculties like sensibility and pragmatism to tackle with it.
If someone says that story-telling is the art of manipulation, then Eastwood here proves to be a past master at it. He uses the technique of a boxer of exhausting the opponent (viewers) by showing some exhilarating stuff in the form of gender/colour biased friendly banter and a story of triumphing against odds, to give a knockout punch in the end.
This is the story of a grizzled boxing trainer Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) taking a lowly young woman Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) under his wings and making her a champ. This is clichéd, you feel, and the director doesn’t do anything counter your beliefs. He simply goes with the flow of the story, thereby making it more difficult for the viewer to accept what is in store. To complicate the matter further there is a narrator, who gives a third dimension to the story. Scrap (Morgan Freeman) forms the third dimension. He is a former boxer who manages the gym where Frankie trains.
If you scratch beneath the facile surface of the premise, you will find the emotional interplay of these three characters, how they tackle their own failure and shortcomings.
Frankie is a failed father, whose daughter has distanced herself from him. His boxers leave him because he is over-protective of them and does not give them a chance to take a shot at the title. He attends the Mass everyday, because he is suffering from terrible guilt, as the priest would say.
Maggie on the other hand, is a 31 year old waitress at an eatery, eating the leftovers from the plates of the guests to save for training herself as a boxer, which she feels it is the only way she can better her life.
Scrap has resigned to his fate as a failed boxer, managing the dingy gym and helping other helpless creatures like Maggie and Danger Barch (Jay Baruchel), a mentally challenged man with delusions of a becoming a champ, feel worthy.
So everything moves forward on predictable lines till the championship match. And, everyone is in a celebratory mode.
But, then the whole hell breaks loose as Maggie is fatally injured by the brutal opponent. She is fitted with an oxygen tube in the throat. Things turn utterly depressing from this point onwards. The relationship of the lead characters comes into new focus. Frankie feels guilty for Maggie’s condition. Maggie is sorry that she could not make mentor’s dream, of making her a champ, come true.
Frankie starts thinking of alternatives for Maggie after she would be out of the rehab centre, and asks her if she wanted anything, she requests him to do the same thing to her as her dead father had did with their crippled pet, to choke her. And, he obliges after much soul-searching and deliberations with the priest who advices against it, not out of theological or spiritual reasons, but for reasons that are purely personal.
We would have whistled and clapped as the film ended only if Maggie had become a champion for cause of putting a ban on boxing or even selling the rights of her life story for a million dollar after the fatal fight, something like what Tom Cruise did in the Oliver Stone film Born on the Fourth of July.
But cinematically it is this unpredictable ending that worked in the favour of this film that helped it reap a rich harvest at the Academy Awards.
“So let the debate continue among the audience and the critics”, the septuagenarian director may be thinking reclining in his easy-chair, “but I’ve the satisfaction of being heralded as one of the greatest filmmaker ever by making this film”.
As you start dissecting the movie, the words of the actor-director take up a new connotation, as if he was warning you that being tough won’t be enough to digest what he is going to show you, so garner your higher faculties like sensibility and pragmatism to tackle with it.
If someone says that story-telling is the art of manipulation, then Eastwood here proves to be a past master at it. He uses the technique of a boxer of exhausting the opponent (viewers) by showing some exhilarating stuff in the form of gender/colour biased friendly banter and a story of triumphing against odds, to give a knockout punch in the end.
This is the story of a grizzled boxing trainer Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) taking a lowly young woman Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) under his wings and making her a champ. This is clichéd, you feel, and the director doesn’t do anything counter your beliefs. He simply goes with the flow of the story, thereby making it more difficult for the viewer to accept what is in store. To complicate the matter further there is a narrator, who gives a third dimension to the story. Scrap (Morgan Freeman) forms the third dimension. He is a former boxer who manages the gym where Frankie trains.
If you scratch beneath the facile surface of the premise, you will find the emotional interplay of these three characters, how they tackle their own failure and shortcomings.
Frankie is a failed father, whose daughter has distanced herself from him. His boxers leave him because he is over-protective of them and does not give them a chance to take a shot at the title. He attends the Mass everyday, because he is suffering from terrible guilt, as the priest would say.
Maggie on the other hand, is a 31 year old waitress at an eatery, eating the leftovers from the plates of the guests to save for training herself as a boxer, which she feels it is the only way she can better her life.
Scrap has resigned to his fate as a failed boxer, managing the dingy gym and helping other helpless creatures like Maggie and Danger Barch (Jay Baruchel), a mentally challenged man with delusions of a becoming a champ, feel worthy.
So everything moves forward on predictable lines till the championship match. And, everyone is in a celebratory mode.
But, then the whole hell breaks loose as Maggie is fatally injured by the brutal opponent. She is fitted with an oxygen tube in the throat. Things turn utterly depressing from this point onwards. The relationship of the lead characters comes into new focus. Frankie feels guilty for Maggie’s condition. Maggie is sorry that she could not make mentor’s dream, of making her a champ, come true.
Frankie starts thinking of alternatives for Maggie after she would be out of the rehab centre, and asks her if she wanted anything, she requests him to do the same thing to her as her dead father had did with their crippled pet, to choke her. And, he obliges after much soul-searching and deliberations with the priest who advices against it, not out of theological or spiritual reasons, but for reasons that are purely personal.
We would have whistled and clapped as the film ended only if Maggie had become a champion for cause of putting a ban on boxing or even selling the rights of her life story for a million dollar after the fatal fight, something like what Tom Cruise did in the Oliver Stone film Born on the Fourth of July.
But cinematically it is this unpredictable ending that worked in the favour of this film that helped it reap a rich harvest at the Academy Awards.
“So let the debate continue among the audience and the critics”, the septuagenarian director may be thinking reclining in his easy-chair, “but I’ve the satisfaction of being heralded as one of the greatest filmmaker ever by making this film”.
(Published in Apr - Jun 2005 issue of 'Success & Ability' with minor changes)
1 comment:
"Don't say that. Maggie walked through that door with nothing buts guts. No chance in the world of being what she needed to be. It was because of you that she was fighting the championship of the world. You did that. People die everyday, Frankie - mopping floors, washing dishes and you know what their last thought is? I never got my shot. Because of you Maggie got her shot. If she dies today you know what her last thought would be? I think I did all right."
Tht line sums up GOOD old Clint's movie!!
Many made bucks selling those Underdogs or Come back from the dead theme kind of movies!!
But lemme me tell you something!! this movie is for those people who with all their problems have a dream and people like Frankie Dunn are there in this world.
Believe in yourself and leave the rest to GOD
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