Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Million Dollar Baby: 2004, dir. Clint Eastwood. Seen at Galaxy Highland (Jan. 30).
It is difficult for me to talk about Million Dollar Baby without giving away some major plot elements. I saw the movie without knowing much of anything about it except that it had a lot of boxing scenes in it, and I think that was the ideal way to enjoy the film. It’s very good, very smartly written and directed, and the performances are excellent.
So. If you haven’t seen the movie, stop reading now. Go see the movie. Forget all the deprecating comments you have heard about how this is “just another formulaic Hollywood movie.” Don’t listen to the whispers about controversial this-and-that. Go now, go see Million Dollar Baby, and you can thank or strangle me later.
If you’ve seen the movie, keep reading if you want to know what I think about it beyond “This was a very good movie.”

(I am going to give away all the plot twists now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
I don’t think I would have seen Million Dollar Baby if I knew what was going to happen in the second half of the movie.
I went to see Million Dollar Baby because it was a boxing movie (I thought) and I was in the mood to see a film about boxing. Hilary Swank plays a woman who is determined to become a professional boxer, and she wants Clint Eastwood’s character to train her. Eastwood is a longtime trainer who has never been able to take a boxer to a title match—they leave him because he doesn’t want to take too many risks. He thinks female boxing is a “freak show” at first and ignores Swank’s character until she finally, finally wears him down. Meanwhile, Morgan Freeman is an aging ex-fighter who works at the gym that Eastwood owns, cleaning up and offering paternal advice. Of course he helps Swank’s character little by little until Eastwood caves in.
Now, none of that is a surprise. The first part of this movie was very much what I would have expected. I used to work out at a boxing gym—a real boxing gym, the kind where they correct your hook because you’re not going for the kidneys, even if you are boxing for exercise and have no intention of ever hitting another person. (I hit a lot of bags and mitts. The early scene that I connected with most was Swank trying to learn the speedbag—it looked just like me when I had to do the same thing. She got a lot better at it than I did, though.)
So I was having a good time watching the movie and deciding which scenes accurately reflected something from my boxing-gym experience and which did not. Our boxing gym was a whole lot louder and more crowded and sweatier. I can’t imagine a fighter who keeps knocking out her opponents in the first round—it seemed more metaphorical than realistic. I can’t imagine a trainer letting his fighter act that way.
And then we got to the pivotal scene in the movie, the title fight. I knew something awful was going to happen. You just know. It’s the right point in the movie. I knew something would happen to one of the three main characters. But I had it all wrong—I thought the mean guys from the gym were going to sneak up on Morgan Freeman while he was watching the fight and beat him to a pulp, so badly he’d be hospitalized or perhaps die. I also could see something bad happening to Eastwood. And the movie was totally sneaky that way—Swank’s character had a big cut on her eye, and we knew that this is how Freeman’s character went blind in one eye, so I wondered if this was going to echo that.
Even when the other fighter slipped in that unexpected punch and Swank fell onto the stool (okay, I had my hand in front of my eyes for part of that, but I assume she fell right on the stool), I figured, okay, she might end up blind or in a wheelchair.
People have been comparing Million Dollar Baby to old-fashioned 1940s dramas. I’m not sure why. (Someone want to give me a specific example?) Because for me, as soon as we found out that Swank’s character was paralyzed below the neck, the movie reminded me very much of the TV movies I’d seen as a child.
I am thinking of the string of TV movies I saw in the late 1970s. My boyfriend suggests they may have been made in the wake of the success of Brian’s Song, although I didn’t see that one. But I saw a whole lot of movies in which sports figures were at the top of their game, be it boxing or skiing or figure skating or football, and suddenly they suffered some horrible injury. But then they always fought back, and amazing things happened. They were able to teach other handicapped people how to ski, they learned how to walk again, or skate, or live happily with their loved ones. There was always a happy ending. (After some Web searching, I figured out that Babe and The Other Side of the Mountain were two of the movies, and possibly Coming Home and Ice Castles also figure in there, but I can’t recall the other ones specifically.)
Million Dollar Baby looked like it might travel that route, but Clint Eastwood wasn’t about to give us anything that easy. Swank’s character’s health grows worse. Her family behaves horribly to her and she cuts them off. She loses a leg to gangrene. Eastwood suggests that she take some college courses, which in one of those 1970s movies might be the turning point to her new life … and she tells him that she wants to die. She wants him to take care of it, to help her this last time. And she is going to be as stubborn as she ever was about getting him to train her, until she gets his help.
That’s the amazing and excellent thing about Million Dollar Baby: it’s smart as a whip. You think you have the movie figured out, you understand the rules of the genre that you think it is, and you know what’s going to happen next. But something else unexpected happens, and the movie is so well structured and set up that the unexpected event makes sense, and the movie is driven in an entirely different direction with a smooth and logical transition. The filmmakers know that you’ve seen hundreds of movies and you know all the cues, and they use those cues to their advantage. Afterwards, you might figure out that this scene was foreshadowing that one, but at the time you are entirely sucked in. This movie is so smart that a cynical person who knows all about narrative film structure can see how certain events are set up and play out, but will still enjoy it immensely.
This movie was directed by someone who knows all about movies and their inner workings, and it shows. You can deride this film as being “good in a standard Hollywood narrative way,” but why is that derision? The filmmakers know how to make a film that audiences understand, and sympathize with, and that will appeal to them, but they do this without one bit of pandering, or contempt for the audience, or sense of artificiality. Yes, it is a traditional narrative film, but it follows this tradition perfectly. If you think that All Narrative Mainstream Films Automatically Suck, then you shouldn’t see this movie. You should go to a little arthouse theater and watch something directed by Lars von Trier, or a Godard retrospective. But I feel very sorry for you, because it’s your loss if you sneer over Million Dollar Baby.
Howard Hawks would have liked this movie, I think.
Million Dollar Baby is surprisingly similar to Unforgiven, the 1992 film that won Oscars for Best Director and Picture. (Note to boyfriend: don’t read this paragraph until after you’ve seen Unforgiven.) A woman who cannot get what she wants in a man’s world asks for help from a veteran of that world (Eastwood). He is reluctant to give in, because he knows it’ll change him, he doesn’t want to go through all of that again. But eventually he and his sidekick (Freeman) take the risk, go out there to do what they must do, and the destruction that Eastwood fears does in fact happen. He comes out of it scarred, and changed, and disappears at the end. Okay, perhaps they don’t sound that similar when I write about them, and I didn’t think about it while I was watching the movie, but it struck me afterwards—particularly the relationship between Eastwood and Freeman’s characters.
Million Dollar Baby has top-notch acting, writing, and directing … although I feel a bit sorry for the screenwriter, since everyone’s crowing over Clint Eastwood as if he wrote the whole thing himself, which he did not. The credits list the screenplay as being written by Paul Haggis, who has a number of other credits (mostly TV dramas). Haggis also wrote and directed the small independent film Crash (not to be confused with the Cronenberg film), which received lots of praise from people who saw it at the Toronto Film Festival. And in fact the screenplay is not entirely original, it is adapted from short stories from F.X. Toole’s book Rope Burns. However, the media will insist on treating Clint Eastwood as auteur, and while I think he did a fine job directing Million Dollar Baby, a lot of other people were also responsible for the overall high quality of the film.
But you knew that, right? Because if you read this far, you’ve already seen Million Dollar Baby. Right? Don’t make me find my old wraps … well, I never could wrap my hands very well even when I was at the boxing gym regularly, so I guess you’re in no danger from me.
But I am very glad I don’t have to vote for any awards like the Oscars. Which is better, Sideways or Million Dollar Baby? I could never decide. They’re both good films, but they’re so different that I cannot imagine comparing the two.