My Darling

Boxing, Clint Eastwood tells us, is backward; you can’t just do the natural actions you would normally do if you want to survive. And in that spirit, this review is backward. Normally, I would do a standard movie review where I, you know, talked about the movie and such. But Million Dollar Baby is the kind of movie where you have to clear away the criticism before you can get to the actual beating heart of the movie.

So I’m doing it backward. I’m going to address the major criticisms about the movie first, and then follow that up with a movie review. I’m doing it this way because I think the criticisms are relevant, and important, and need to be addressed before any intelligent discussion can take place. More to the point, I am deeply concerned that I might be taken out of context if I talk about the movie without reference to the criticism, and that might result in offense to people I respect, and that’s something that I have no desire to do.

But in order to do that, I have to give away both of the movie’s spoilers, which is something else I have no great desire to do — but I will, because it’s important.

So I’m drawing a line at the end of this paragraph. Read past it at your peril if you have not yet seen Million Dollar Baby — but if that’s the case, bookmark this review, and come back later, if you don’t mind. For those of you who will continue reading, I am going to assume that you’ve seen the movie, and therefore I’m not going to explicate or recapitulate the plot here. Thanks.

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There are basically three criticisms of Million Dollar Baby that I’m going to address here, one at a time, in order of their importance. I want to get them out of the way first, so that we can go back and discuss the movie like gentlemen and gentlewomen later.

The disability critique is the most important, by far. The criticism is that the decision of Clint Eastwood as director to a) show Hillary Swank’s character, a person with a spinal cord injury, as a figure of pity whose life is not worth living and b) to have Eastwood’s character assist her in her suicide attempt is deeply harmful. It reinforces unfair stereotypes about people with disabilities as pitiable victims who would be better off dead, and may lead doctors and family members to consider euthanasia in situations where doing so would be against the expressed interest of the person with a disability. It is led by members of the Not Dead Yet organization, who have posted extended commentary about the film on their website. Although I seldom link to other reviews, I will point out the John Hockenberry review on that site, just to give you an idea of the viewpoint, and because I agree with what he says on the subject.

I think everyone can agree that Million Dollar Baby doesn’t represent the reality of life for people with disabilities. It is the converse of the Christopher Reeve story in a lot of ways. Reeve’s story was huge with the media because he was famous, articulate, and handsome, and he had the money to pay for physical therapy and assistive technology that many people with spinal cord injuries don’t have access to. Nobody would argue that Christopher Reeve didn’t have a good quality of life. The Hillary Swank character is presented in just the opposite way; she’s getting horrible care, no counseling, terrible, untreated pressure sores, having her leg amputated, all sorts of awful stuff. The reality is (or at least I hope it is) somewhere in the middle. People with spinal cord injuries don’t generally have the resources Christopher Reeve had, and they don’t have the hopelessness that the Hillary Swank character does. (Although, of course, Reeve had pressure sores, too, and they were a contributing factor to his death.)

Whatever your view is of Million Dollar Baby, it is problematic to single it out and say that the movie itself is the problem. It isn’t. Million Dollar Baby is a reflection of societal attitudes, and the whole myth/fear/stereotype baggage that all too often goes along with disability. Say what you like about Million Dollar Baby, but it’s not any more responsible for disability discrimination than Birth of a Nation was responsible for racial discrimination.

What I’m concerned about here is how the disability critique — which is perfectly legitimate and justified, and I believe, correct — affects me as a critic. The actions of Eastwood’s character are of course contemptible. (And condemned, strongly, within the movie by the priest character.) But extending that criticism to the whole movie — and protesting the actions of critics who wrote positively about the movie — seems to me to be going to far. There’s a lot to praise about Million Dollar Baby, though, and it’s not wrong to point that out, and to discuss why, and that’s what I intend to do.

Then there is the conservative critique, which is basically that the movie is a left-wing statement in favor of euthanasia, and by extension abortion. This seems a little confused to me, in that abortion is not really the issue. The issue, especially with a woman boxer, seems to be feminism, which is not the same thing as being pro-abortion. But be that as it may. My chief complaint against the conservative critique — as a slightly-to-the-right of Atilla the Hun type myself — is that if you want to critique Million Dollar Baby on political grounds as being pro-euthanasia, you had should also support the Medicaid funding for the community services and supports and vocational rehabilitation needed to help more people with spinal cord injuries live independent lives and enter the workplace as productive citizens.

That sound you heard was the rush of heavy footsteps as right-wing talk radio hosts rushed to argue for more Medicaid funding. Or crickets. It’s hard to tell.

Then there is the realist critique, which is fair but beside the point. Case in point; the scene where Morgan Freeman, as a sixty-year-plus man with the loss of sight in one eye, stepping into the ring and knocking down a well-conditioned fighter. This is ridiculous. I think everyone knows this. But it’s something of a crowd-pleasing moment, and somtimes I like to be pleased. The generally loathsome Skip Bayless, writing for ESPN Page 2, nails a lot of the other plot points that I’m not discussing here. But so what?

It’s just a movie.

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And what a movie it is. Million Dollar Baby is the best movie of 2004, despite the critiques, despite the criticism, despite everything that is wrong with it, because it’s got the best three-actor team of the year playing off each other. Clint Eastwood as a director runs the triangle offense better than anyone this side of Phil Jackson. In Unforgiven, you had Eastwood and Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman. In Mystic River, you had Sean Penn and Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon. Here, you have Eastwood and Freeman and Hillary Swank, and that’s the movie version of Schilling and Pedro and Derek Lowe, winning eight games in a row to clinch the Series.

First, there’s Clint. Clint started playing “old” in the underrated Heartbreak Ridge; this is the oldest Clint yet. He’d had a heart transplant in Blood Work, his last flick, but that was the last time he let the ravages of age get to him as an actor. Here, he’s really old, ancient almost, a cut man turned boxing trainer, trying to get one more championship belt for his gym. Age has made him crustier and more cantankerous than other Eastwood characters, but increased his conversational sparring prowess, which he needs badly against his opponents.

His main sparring partner is Morgan Freeman, playing “Scrap”, a veteran boxer who lost an eye in a bout where Eastwood was in his corner. This is a vintage Freeman performance — the worldly-wise voiceovers, the slow drawling wit, that particular slow sleepy forceful delivery leavened by empathy and whiskey. This is not only a tailor-made Freeman part, but it’s a part no one else could ever have played.

And then there is Swank, whose movie this really is. She’s playing a tough waitress from the toughest trailer park in the Ozarks, who thinks she can be a boxer, if only Eastwood will train her. She’s got work ethic tattooed on every pore of her body, and she punches the speed bag as though it’s a prayer wheel to take her to another dimension. It’s a completely unglamorous role (especially in the scenes where she’s sneaking out food for a nonexistent dog, and then devouring it herself), but Swank is winning in it, and takes it beyond stereotype or sympathy. In a way, it’s a lot like Charlize Theron’s star turn in Monster, just that authentic, but we love Swank’s Maggie in a way that we never could with Theron’s serial killer.

What happens after that is discussed above. All I can add is that Eastwood is right; it’s a father-daughter movie, but that sneaks up on you, the way that love sneaks up on Eastwood and Swank. “My darling,” he calls her, in their last scene together, and no matter whatever else you think about that scene, that still works, that respect between two great actors, that love between two memorable characters, that love that endures in this world and into the next, where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away, and all that remains is that love. “My darling”, he says, and that’s the axis on which the whole world turns, in life, and through suffering, and in death.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 11th, 2006 at 5:35 am and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.