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| Tuesday, February 1, 2005 12:16 PM |
| Million Dollar Baby |
 by Fëanor |
I like to try to see all the Best Picture Oscar nominees every year before the ceremony, so I can be properly horrified when the winner is announced. Usually when the nominations are released, I've already seen one or two of them. This year, I hadn't seen any. So last night I decided to change that and went to see Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. When I got to the theater, I was sorely tempted to change my plans and see Merchant of Venice instead, but finally decided MDB was a higher priority.
Well, MDB has a good chance of picking up an Oscar. It has plenty of the qualities that the Academy likes: it's shamelessly manipulative and highly melodramatic, full of overwrought emotional sequences that jerk tears and cry out for little golden statues. The bad people in the film are undeniably bad and utterly hateful; the good people in the film are inescapibly lovable. Most are stereotypes of one type or another. Eastwood plays his regular character--a gruff, irascible old guy with a painful past and a warm heart underneath his grizzled exterior. Morgan Freeman narrates with the same quiet, moving power with which he narrated Shawshank Redemption, and appears in the film as the wise old black man who gives the white main characters the advice they need to do well. Hilary Swank appears as the tough, upbeat, spunky young kid who came from nothing and just wants to make something of herself. Her family is the trashy, greedy, ungrateful type who disapprove of her dreams and just want her to settle down and fly right. And then of course there's the evil, cheating boxer known as the Blue Bear, whose entrance on screen is heralded by ominous music.
The movie's loaded with familiar characters like these, as well as familiar themes, familiar story elements, and familiar stylistic tropes. And, as I said, it is highly manipulative, wrenching at your emotions with firm skill. So I feel like I should really dislike this movie.
The problem is, it's so damned effective. I did love the good characters; I did hate the evil characters; the funny scenes made me laugh; and when the scenes came where I was supposed to cry, I wept like a baby.
Maybe a lot of things about the film are familiar, but they are all handled with the skill of a master. The music is excellent; the dialogue realistic and effective; the lighting and camera work just right; Swank and Freeman are at their absolute best. And then of course there's Eastwood. Clint is a seasoned veteran on both sides of the camera, and it shows here. I fought him all the way--I saw what he was trying to do to me, and I tried to step back to a position of critical detachment. But he beat me--and he squeezed tear after tear out of me, until my cheeks were wet and I was blowing my nose with napkins.
Some part of me says that Million Dollar Baby is not a great film--that it's mawkish and obvious; that it takes cheap shots; and that its wise lessons take the form of clumsy metaphors and tired adages. But that part of me is very small. The rest of me finds the film deeply moving; its characters warmly human, lovable, and memorable.
And the film does do something that might be a bit unexpected (spoilers coming up). Another movie might have gone for an upbeat ending, with Swank's character triumphantly fighting her way back from her injury with the help of Eastwood, miraculously healing herself with the help of only love and will and God. But MDB points itself head-on at a really tough moral question and crashes into it at full speed, not swerving away from the rather dark ending that must inevitably follow Eastwood's choice.
So ultimately, the only thing I can say with certainty that I don't like about the movie is the title. Million Dollar Baby? What's with that? Other than that, and despite the objections of that tiny voice inside my head, I think the film is really quite excellent.
And even though MDB makes clear the awful physical consequences that can follow from a career in boxing, it also kind of makes you want to go hit a speed bag a couple of times, just to see how it feels. |
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