On the 29th of February, 2005 the man with no name, becoming both the oldest man in history to receive an Oscar for best director and one of very few to receive two Oscars a piece in the categories of directing and best picture, graced a stage with the eyes of the stars, the world’s media and a large chunk of the western population anticipating his words. Gone was the roughened, battle-hardened voice of his film persona. Clint Eastwood the cowboy was for the evening stored away in the corner of a musty, old tobacco-stained shack filled with ponchos, empty bottles of whisky and colt revolvers somewhere in an unforgiving desert; Clint Eastwood the director, a stranger to us, was instead present. Smiling to his audience, genuine and modest – he humbly accepted his golden statue with many “thank you’s” before singling out his own mother in the crowd for a special thanks – “At 96 I’m thanking her for her genes.” It is fitting to the film for which he received this award that Eastwood would bring such a topic as age up in his Oscar acceptance. Million Dollar Baby is a sports film, but a sports film like no other. It’s blend of crowd-pleasing boxing scenes mixed with gritty, unromantic drama is the story of an ageing man, riddled with guilt, whose whole life has been a series of bad decisions and failed relationships with friends and family and has lived to see the world around him crash and burn, time and time again. Million Dollar Baby is a superbly acted and executed boxing drama, made only more powerful and endearing by Eastwood’s trademark directing charm (and developed by his other trademark – his stage anti-hero).
If Million Dollar Baby’s Frankie Dunn (an ageing boxing coach and formally the best “cutman” in the business) is not the long lost twin brother of Gran Torino’s prejudiced Korean War vet Walt Kowalski, then he is certainly a distant cousin – like Walt he is an ageing dirty harry for a modern audience. The plot follows the lives of Frankie, a moderately successful boxing coach and boxing gym owner, his best friend and maintenance man (and failed fighter) Eddie “Scrap Iron” Dupree – played by Morgan Freeman – and of course, Hilary Swank’s strong-willed, white-trash boxer Maggie “mo cuishle” Fitzgerald. These three roam the same environment, their sport the only thing they have besides each other. The sport of boxing means something different to them all. To Maggie, it is her only escape from a life spent dining tables. To Eddie, who was blinded in one eye as a promising young boxer in a fight which ended his career, boxing is what defines him and also what ruined him. To Frankie, alone in the world save for his only daughter (who has removed him from her life), training people to box is his only path, his fate. The lives of these three characters reflect each other. They are the centre of this film; their stories piecing together this tale with one inevitable outcome – boxing will be the downfall of each of them.
Frankie Dunn, having recently lost his most promising young fighter, point blank refuses to train women. Boxing to him is a man’s sport; and women have caused him nothing but heartache in his life. Maggie, like Frankie, is insistent, stubborn and arrogant. She pursues Frankie, determined to have him as her boxing coach, and no one else. Maggie knows little of boxing, what she has learnt of the sport has been from her mistakes, coach-less, within the ring. Frankie stubbornly refuses to train her despite her purchase of a six-month membership at his gym. We first see the length of her determination to box when Eddie first catches her in the gym after hours, still walloping the same punch bag she has been at the entire day (and walloping it the wrong way, with no skill). In the darkness of the gym, a sliver of light reaching in onto their faces and the punch bag, Eddie gives her some advice. We see also in this scene the world lived in by Eddie. His home is nought but a dim room in the gym, graced only by a miniscule television, a bed and nought much more; we get the impression that this man has strolled into the gym one day with no where else to go and never left. He has become as much a part of this gym as the ropes on the boxing ring.
The film is made whole by the bond of these three and the strength of Maggie’s belief in Frankie Dunn as her trainer; it is as if she feels the connection between them before she even knows him. It is both a humorous and excellent moment when Frankie agrees to train Maggie, coming just after a series of disputes over Maggie’s use of Frankie’s long forgotten speed bag. As soon as he begins to train her the film kicks off into sports-movie glory. Maggie, who “grew up knowing one thing, that she was trash,” finds herself weaving the sense of purpose she discovers through boxing into her work and home life; she takes in every word of what Frankie teaches her, using his knowledge to better her style in the ring. However Maggie proves to be a rogue fighter, abandoning the tactics she has learnt in order to knock-out her opponents as quickly and ferociously as possible. Thus begins the films dive from underdog tale to full-blown sports movie. The scenes with Maggie in the ring will have the viewer edge-of-seat, fist-punching-air ecstatic; and the fights keep coming one after the other, knock-out after knock-out. Imagine Rocky Balboa knocking out Apollo Creed time and time again – only in a different time period and environment where boxing seems less lavish than in the rocky films. Eastwood never loses track of the films true heart, weaved in between these boxing matches are some great emotional-charged moments. The more famous a fighter Maggie becomes, the stronger the relationship between her and Frank grows, and the fact that Maggie sees Frankie as a replacement for her dead father; and he for his daughter is not avoided but embraced in an obvious, heart-on-sleeve manner. Such is Eastwood’s style as a director. He takes no influence from any other film maker in history or in modern cinema. Things are shot run-of-the mill, blatant, realistic and true to the world we live in. There is no denial from the characters of Frankie and Maggie; they happily accept the fact that he is the father she wants and she the daughter he misses. The two characters make the most of their rare connection towards each other; embracing the loss of their loved ones and the arrival of a new soul mate.
Morgan Freeman – as always – shines like the acting marvel he is. His familiar, comforting narration accompanies the moving story line with smooth, vocal charm. Freeman’s Eddie is the lonesome observer of the events in the film; the voice of reason and the true hero of the story. At once his character gains our sympathy and respect and graces the most spectacular scenes in the film. Such as when he takes Maggie out for dinner one evening, before prompting that she should switch managers to avoid upsetting Frank when she eventually, and apparently inevitably turns his back on him like all the other fighter’s have – he gives to her, and the audience, an involving and magnificent speech about the fight which lost him the sight in his bad eye. The strength and determination with which he fought in his youth is reminiscent of Maggie’s, the brutality of the story reminds us of the boxing world as a “man’s” world; thus promoting Maggie further more as a rare, empowered and strong-willed character. The speech involves us, sucks us in, and moves us in the way that Million Dollar Baby does without really meaning to. It reminds us of the diminishment of youth; and the long and costly price of making the wrong decisions in life. It shows us how one bad move, one glimmer of young arrogance can land a man old, blind – and at a complete dead-end. Thus Million Dollar Baby’s message is devastating.
Each of the three central characters play an important role in completing the films message. Eastwood carries the film on his shoulders, something he has done expertly since the nineteen-sixties, and he provides the viewer with a sense of realism through on-screen honesty and wit. Whereas Freeman watches the world around him tear itself to pieces in what is nothing more to his character than the blink of an eye. Swank plays her role exceptionally in a performance that is more than worthy of the golden boy it won her; she has us entirely convinced as the roughened hillbilly Maggie Fitzgerald. Her character is the bringer of joy to these ageing, lonely men. She drifts through the story spreading youth, courage and happiness; before she strips it away from them, herself, and us, forever. The old men emerge from the film physically unscathed; but she is not so lucky.
What spoke to me personally about Million Dollar Baby is that despite its modern setting, and the rise of Maggie as a boxing champ; the characters live in a world which seems largely old-fashioned. Maggie’s home is as bare as Eddie’s single room, her apartment nought but a run-down empty expanse to contain her; yet she shows no shame in revealing her world to Frankie. In the section of the film where Maggie and Frankie visit her family’s trailer park home in the hot, dusty American mid-west, this is put on display. We are given a glimpse into the upbringing of this fighter, as well as her despicable, greedy mother and the selfish siblings she has grown up around. Having saved money from her winnings in the ring, Maggie surprises her mother by buying her a house – something that has become something of an ambition for the determined boxer. When shown around the house, her mother shows no joy, no happiness nor pride. She rounds on her daughter, telling her that she will never receive her benefits from the government with such a place; asking her if she ever thought about her dear mother. Her mother is a character so infuriatingly obnoxious she gives the films greatest villain, the masculine German, former-prostitute, harder-than-nails boxer, Billie "The Blue Bear,"with whom Maggie inevitably will fight – a run for her money. Maggie does eventually fight her, in the film’s final and most shocking fight.
This is when the film truly turns on us. What was forming into a rousing story of determination and victory back flips into a drama of heartache and guilt. It is this twist in the plot, which had been hinted at throughout by freeman’s past-tense narration, combined with its alternative take on the sport which makes Million Dollar Baby unique amongst other boxing dramas – seeing such brutal competition from a woman’s perspective adds just the edge that boxing films, though rare, may have grown to lack had it not been made. The hardest part of Hilary Swank’s performance was to portray a character who at once is both a strong and competent fighter, but also a woman with real fragility; and for the film’s final half hour she shows an astonishing grasp of both. Frankie, who has been a regular at his local catholic church for most of his life despite his shaky views on religion and faith, and his tendency to ridicule and contradict Father Harvark at every available moment seeks comfort from him as the final events of the film unfold. He confesses the guilt he feels at having let Maggie into his life, a guilt which seems to have boiled within him since before he knew her. Frankie too shows his fragility, the tortured state of his conscious. Here is a man, born and raised catholic, who has grown to doubt his faith and eventually lose track of it; but in his most desperate moment turned back to it. It is strange for us to see this man, strong-willed and tough, dependant on anything. Going back to my point about the film feeling old-fashioned, Frankie is clinging to a sense of guilt and need for forgiveness which stems back probably to his youth. By this point, the films two strongest characters are broken; one faced with the most difficult of decisions and the other completely powerless. Freeman’s Eddie is the only character recognisable in this respect from the films start. The events which occur as the film concludes can be related to a point which Freeman’s character makes earlier in his narration, whilst Frankie is training Maggie for her first match, he claims that that in the training process a trainer “strips ‘em (the fighter) down to bare wood.” This is how the film feels, how the audience feels and how Eastwood’s and Swank look. We have all been stripped down to bare wood by the events. In one swing Million Dollar Baby ropes you in to its sports-movie glory, feeding us knowledge of boxing and the true nature of fighting; and just as our love for the film’s format begins to reach its height, with one haymaker it knocks us back into place with a serious, heart-wrenchingly upsetting finale.
It is easy to see why Million Dollar Baby had such an impact on audiences upon its release; there are very few flaws in its production, which is somewhat remarkable considering it was made in a stunning 37 days. Eastwood’s signature direction gives the script just the compliment it deserves. The camera, as always in Eastwood films is always in the right place but never in the perfect place. Nice shots which could have been crafted into exquisitely beautiful ones represent the film and its environment best. The best way to describe how Million Dollar Baby has been crafted is ‘honestly’ – every set feels real, every room lived in, every boxing ring feels bled on and thus all the characters feel on the same level as the viewer. The soundtrack, composed by Eastwood (making him director, star, composer and producer of this one) is just as complimenting as the visuals. However, Jay Burchel’s “idiotic-hillbilly” act as weedy, wannabe boxer “Danger” delves on the slightly annoying, getting more screen time than he deserves; his character does however get redeemed half way in, during one of the best sequences – featuring Eddie’s 110th and final fight. Another slight problem, which is a common problem in all boxing films (most recently David O Russell’s excellent “The Fighter”), is when Maggie and Frankie go for a fight in London
Million Dollar Baby transcends most boxing films with its moving themes on family, old age, faith and religion. It’s most obvious message being that life will leave us with more wounds than any boxing match ever could; life outside of the ring is far more harmful. The character of Maggie Fitzgerald seems to feel more at home in front of a punch bag or within the ring than she ever does waiting tables, in her apartment or her family’s trailer. She is a woman drawn to a sport for unknown reasons, like a calling similar to that of Muhammad Ali’s, who simply woke one morning and believed God was telling him he should be a boxer. This film is about a suppressive, rough woman with deep emotional issues stretching back to the death of her beloved father and the treatment she has received from her pig-headed mother coming out of her shell. For me, it does not quite top the only other boxing drama on the same level in terms of the drama-out-weighing-the-boxing format, Raging Bull. It does however come very close. Like Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby has turned the boxing film on its head. Raging Bull showed us the life a boxer who was dangerous, despicable, unlikeable and arrogant; Million Dollar Baby presents the woman’s perspective, her struggle to be taken seriously as a fighter and the glory which is stripped from her. Where Raging Bull was unsettling and edgy; Million Dollar Baby is thought-provoking and sentimental.
“Everyone’s got a particular number of fights” – says Freeman’s wise Eddie, and this may be true for a lot more than just the boxing world. There is only so much a person can take in life. What Million Dollar Baby represents is the fight that is existing. The world that can beat and break us until we are unrecognisable, and at the same time it reminds us that pain, loss and guilt are all inevitable consequences of the passing of time; all life is travelling towards the same eventual end. In this message which he transmits there is a great beauty and simplicity. This film is about the irony that the old men must live on in a cruel world, whilst youth is sabotaged and wasted. It represents the pain of time passing us by and the struggle of living and breathing. The joy of Million Dollar Baby is in its execution and its subtlety; the story, though sad, is more humane and moral than any other boxing film I have seen. Its final shot, which lingers in the way all final shots should, leaves us in wonder. It reveals very little; which is just the right amount.
So it was indeed fitting that in his Oscars acceptance, Eastwood brought forth the topic of old age. In his life, he has given us some of the greatest American films around: Unforgiven, his western swansong, is now considered one of the greatest westerns ever made and with good reason. This man has also given us the likes of Mystic River, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, Heartbreak Ridge, Changeling, Flags of Our Father, Letters from Iwo Jima, Gran Torino and Invictus – the list goes on and on - the format in his films never swaying from its honest subtlety. Though his mother has since passed on, with Eastwood pushing 81, we’re thanking her for her genes. Here’s to another ten years of Eastwood gems.
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