MILLION DOLLAR BABY

A Triumph of Human Storytelling.

Clint Eastwood is a man who is confident and experienced enough to have a deep faith in the audience that he is trying to reach. He is also a master of omission, of the left-out detail/line, trusting in his gut that his audience is willing to participate in his films by exercising their imaginations; that they never want any aspect of the story to be 'dumbed-down' for ready consumption.

In fact, his trust in the audience to use their own minds to fill in gaps is like a gift of part ownership in the film. "Million Dollar Baby" is a beautiful gift, and a masterpiece if film-making. Under Eastwood's painstakingly stripped-down direction the story emerges as that rarest of birds, an uplifting tragedy.

On the surface, the film is a simple boxing story about a hellcat from the Ozarks (if that’s how it’s spelt) and the grizzled Irish Catholic trainer who takes her on.

Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) is an emotionally closed, sour individual. Estranged from his only daughter, he holes up in his downtown L.A. gym, surrounded by fighters and Scap (Freeman), an ex-boxer who runs the place. Frankie is not on good terms with God, either. He attends Mass nearly every day but does so mostly to argue with the exasperated priest.

Enter Maggie(Swank). She's a thirty-something trailer trash woman from southwest Missouri. But for my money, Maggie is this generation's Rocky. That may seem an easy, simplistic, and over-reaching comparison, but the parallels are deep, obvious and myriad. Like many people, Maggie's dream (being a professional boxer) is always just out of reach, yet she cannot give it up. She works as a waitress to make ends meet (or at least the ends are almost touching), but spends all her spare time training.

Like Dunn, Maggie has her own ghosts haunting her, and through these ghosts they bond tighter than super glue. The heart and work (incalculably huge amounts) that Swank put into becoming Maggie are unnoticeable. It's a silly phrase but it's as if she was born to play this part. It fits like a glove. The real life parallel of her relationship to Eastwood no doubt played a part in her ability to connect with the character's relationship to Dunn. Yet this in no way diminishes her accomplishment. She is brilliant.

When Maggie, an emotionally scared hillbilly, asks Frankie to train her, his answer is curt: At 31, she is too old, and he doesn't train "girlies." Nonetheless, she works out at his gym for a year, getting occasional tips from Scrap(Freeman), before wearing Frankie down to where he grudgingly takes her on.

Clearly, Maggie becomes the daughter Frankie lacks, but theirs is a combative relationship in which they are never on the same page until the end. Similarly, Frankie and Scrap bicker like an old married couple, yet beneath the surface is a compelling symbiosis. Frankie was cutman on Scrap's last fight, where he lost an eye. Frankie can never forgive himself for not finding a way to stop the brutal bout, and Scrap knows how quickly Frankie would fall apart were he to ever leave.

What happened to Scrap has made Frankie overly cautious. He tells all his fighters to protect themselves, but what he really wants to protect is himself. Thus, he never puts his boxers into title fights, which drives them to managers who will. When he finally does agree to a title fight, his worst fears are confirmed.

The rocky road taken by fighter and trainer leads to a championship match. Here the story takes an abrupt turn into tragedy that forces the two to confront the true meaning of love and the strange way fate can deliver redemption.

The film is told in a voice-over narration by Scrap in which the poetry and homilies are a bit self-conscious. Director Eastwood keeps individual scenes simple and quick, like Maggie's fights. Once he gets the emotional impact he's after, he cuts and moves quickly on. A clever piece of filmmaking for today’s impatient audience.

Also the cinematography is straightforward and muted with colors. The film also plays nicely with light and shadows, shifting in and out of light. There is a grey area between the light and the dark where something approaching truth lies waiting, and this is where Eastwood takes us, then leaves us there to ponder. "Million Dollar Baby" is a shadow play.

In conclusion Million Dollar Baby is a triumph of human storytelling made only possible by Clint Eastwood’s masterful vision.

So till my next post ya, its bye from Ganz.

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