Million Dollar Baby

[MacGuffin]

Why the 'Million Dollar' secret?
Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" is an engrossing work of cinematic art with profoundly serious intentions. Source: Los Angeles Times

*SPOILER ALERT*

According to the vast majority of the nation's film critics, nearly all those intentions have been fully and brilliantly realized, which is why the movie is a contender in multiple Academy Award categories, including best picture. But "Million Dollar Baby" also is a film whose moral center — and, yes, this is a movie for which you can use those words without blushing — is a quietly confrontational exploration of one of this era's most delicate, complex and contentious issues. That is the religiously, philosophically, socially and legally fraught question of assisted suicide.

That's a pretty hot and thought-provoking topic. And anything that involves drama, film stars, morality and controversy usually careens deafeningly around the media echo chamber like the mythic call of the Horn Resounding.

So, why the silence here?

Well, if you haven't seen the film, the odds are you don't know that it even involves euthanasia. The reason you don't know is because the nation's film critics made a collective decision not to tell you — or, to be more precise, they decided you don't really want to know. In fact, for all the critical attention justifiably lavished on "Million Dollar Baby," not a single review in a single major U.S. newspaper or magazine even alluded to the presence — let alone the dramatic centrality — of an assisted suicide. That includes the notices that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and every other publication of any size or reputation accessible on the Web.

How that occurred and why raises a number of interesting questions about the state of film criticism as it currently is practiced in American newspapers and news magazines.

Boxing insider

"Million Dollar Baby" is based on a short story of the same name by the late Jerry Boyd, the Long Beach-born son of an Irish immigrant and a veteran cut man and trainer, who wrote under the pen name F.X. Toole. It was part of a brilliant and highly praised collection of boxing fiction, "Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner," published to critical acclaim not long before Boyd's untimely death two years ago at the age of 72. In the film, Eastwood plays Frankie Dunn, a cut man and trainer, who owns a suitably seedy gym called the Hit Pit. Its janitor and Dunn's best friend is a one-eyed former fighter, Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris, played by Morgan Freeman. (It is, by the way, a pairing that wonderfully echoes the long, real-life partnership between Boyd and trainer Dub Huntley, to whom Toole dedicated "Rope Burns.")

Eastwood's Dunn is a loner who reads Yeats, studies Gaelic and writes weekly letters to an estranged daughter, who just as regularly returns them unopened. He's a Catholic who attends daily Mass, after which he torments a weary young priest with the theological equivalent of wiseguy questions. The centrality of the suicide issue to this story is obvious, since this protagonist is clearly situated as a practicing member of a church whose greatest 20th century theologian, the German Jesuit Karl Rahner, defined mortal sin as "the will to die autonomously."

Into this mix comes the aspiring young female boxer Maggie, played by Hilary Swank, who wins success trained by the initially reluctant Frankie. Bonds are formed. Unforeseeable tragedy occurs. One of the main characters is left a quadriplegic and, unable to bear with that state, asks another of the characters to help in committing suicide. How that protagonist responds is the moral and emotional heart of the film.

So why is it absent from the reviews? The answer, according to a number of leading film critics, is that — just as physicians are schooled to do no harm — the cardinal rule of newspaper and magazine film criticism is "never give away the plot." Moreover, the critics interviewed for this column unanimously made the point that the volume and anger of reader response to their work soars beyond comfort whenever they're deemed to have "given up too much." Some even recount incidents in which their editors raised questions about just how much detail they'd included in their reviews — however relevant to the critical points at issue. Readers, they insist, don't want to know this much. It spoils the movie!

Film as an art form

It's an interesting argument — and obviously sincerely offered — but it's spoken in the language of commerce and not art, which is why it rings hollow when applied to a film like "Million Dollar Baby." It's obvious that a reviewer's stance will vary according to the work under consideration. It would be churlish to give away the plot of a thriller — such as "The Sixth Sense" — or even what Graham Greene would have termed "an entertainment," like "The Crying Game" or his own "The Third Man."

But a serious film with genuinely important themes occupies an entirely different aesthetic space and demands the same sort of treatment that a great novel or important painting demands. To presume otherwise is to relegate film to a lesser art and film criticism to a lesser genre.

Imagine the Getty had acquired an important new painting and your newspaper's art critic were sent to review it and came back to report, "This is a masterpiece that has as its theme a vital moral issue, which is depicted in a shocking image. However, I'm not going to tell about either the issue or the image, because I don't want to spoil your experience of the painting."

The person who wrote that quickly would be encouraged to seek opportunities in the burgeoning food service sector.

In one review of "Million Dollar Baby" after another, however, critics Delphicly referred to the film taking "a dark turn." A dark turn? It has a positively 19th century ring, but what the devil does it mean? It's a come-on, not a critical observation, which bring us back to the nexus of commerce and film criticism. The problem with revealing too much then is that people won't go out to see the movie so criticism becomes about getting people into theater seats and not about getting ideas about this or any other film into their heads.

It's hard to imagine why, in this year of controversy over the failure of "The Passion of the Christ" and "Fahrenheit 9/11" to win best picture nominations, at least one critic didn't somehow feel obliged to make the point that they were passed over because they were propaganda and "Million Dollar Baby" was included because it is art. Surely, somebody who cares about film, as a critic is presumed to do, wanted to make the point that there is an essential difference between art that provokes and a work that is merely provocative.

Somewhere in all this, there's a misperception of responsibility and a fundamental mistrust of the readers masquerading as sensitivity. Maybe it's time for American film criticism to take off the training wheels.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Judging 'Baby' by its politics is just artless
Conservative critics are sharpening their knives over Clint Eastwood's boxing drama.
By Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

*WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD*

For years, conservative commentators of all stripes, led by critic-turned-radio host Michael Medved, have noisily bashed Hollywood for mocking religion or ignoring it entirely, contending — and this is a big issue with Medved — that the entertainment industry is largely made up of left-wing Beverly Hills dilettantes and unbelievers out of touch with the real moral values of the country.

So imagine my relief when I saw "Million Dollar Baby," the critically lauded film that's now a major contender for best picture and other Oscar accolades. Not only was the film made by Clint Eastwood, a longtime Republican, but the movie's leading man, played by Eastwood, is a regular churchgoer who believes in hard work, rejects crass materialism, values honor and loyalty and wrestles with soul-wrenching spiritual issues in an honest, mature fashion. A tender, beautifully made movie about faith and hard-earned redemption — surely this would be cause for celebration among conservatives and religious figures who see Hollywood as a cesspool of sex and sleaze, right?
 
Ah, what a fuzzy idealist I am. When it comes to hot-button issues, conservatives are just as guilty of knee-jerk political correctness as their liberal foes. By and large they've reacted to the movie as if it were a starry-eyed drama with Barbra Streisand and Sean Penn as Marxist history professors indoctrinating coeds in the theory of evolution. (Spoiler alert: If you want to avoid learning any "Million Dollar Baby" plot twists, read no further till you've seen the movie!)

Medved has led the charge, blasting the film (and to filmgoers' horror, largely giving away its ending) on CNN, "The O'Reilly Factor" and "The 700 Club," calling it "an insufferable manipulative right-to-die movie." Rush Limbaugh chimed in, dubbing the film "a million-dollar euthanasia movie." Debbie Schlussel, another conservative talk-show host, called the film a "left-wing diatribe," claiming it supports "killing the handicapped, literally putting their lights out." And Ted Baehr, head of the Christian Film and Television Commission, described the film to Sean Hannity as "very anti-Catholic and anti-Christian."

It would be easy to write off these attacks as the ravings of people who probably think there are hidden North Korean missile plans embedded in "Shrek 2." After all, Focus on the Family leader James Dobson recently accused SpongeBob SquarePants of being part of a pro-gay agenda. Claiming he was misquoted, he managed to make things worse by attacking the group using SpongeBob to promote tolerance and diversity with schoolkids, saying that tolerance and diversity "are almost always buzzwords for homosexual advocacy."

But the assault on "Million Dollar Baby" by Medved is not as easy to dismiss. A self-described conservative whose new book, "Right Turns," argues that conservatives are "both happier and nicer" than liberals and that "a more Christian America is good for the Jews," Medved wields considerable clout, via his commentaries, which run in USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, and his popular radio show, which airs here weekdays on KRLA-AM (870) from noon to 3 p.m. The day we spoke last week, his show had an exclusive interview with Bush political guru Karl Rove.

Not surprisingly, Medved didn't like a lot of the Oscar-nominated films. Writing in USA Today, he criticized "Vera Drake" as portraying abortion in a "positive, almost sacramental light." "Kinsey," he says, "ridicules the religious orthodoxy of the main character's father." As he put it, the Oscar nominations "illustrate Hollywood's profound, almost pathological discomfort with the traditional religiosity embraced by most of its mass audience."

But does he really believe "Million Dollar Baby" is a euthanasia movie, not a serious drama about the price people pay for their dreams? "I don't see it as a serious movie that grapples with serious moral issues," Medved told me. "Take the way it portrays the priest [that Eastwood banters with at church]. It's totally one-sided. He's portrayed as a bozo, as a shallow twit. I know Catholic priests, and if you're a priest, you're not thrown by basic questions about the Trinity."

Medved said the film was "heavy-handed, clumsy and for the most part — except for Hilary Swank — badly acted and full of clichés." A big part of his problem with the film was "that the studio has tried to hide the real story. They were afraid no one would come see it if they told you what it was really about."

To hear a statement like that you have to assume that either Medved is ludicrously naive or simply disingenuous. Even if "MDB" were about euthanasia, which it surely is not, what studio marketer in their right mind would position their new release as a right-to-die movie instead of a soulful boxing drama? That's not deception, that's Publicity 101. But that sort of slippery reasoning infects nearly all of Medved's critiques about the movie business. In numerous interviews, as well as his book "Hollywood vs. America," he has promoted the idea that Hollywood follows its own dark obsessions instead of giving the public what it really wants — good, wholesome entertainment. This leads to all sorts of wacky oversimplifications. Medved claims, for example, that movie attendance fell off precipitously from 1965 to 1969 not because film studios faced a complicated set of new economic challenges and were slow to adapt to a burgeoning youth market but because Jack Valenti introduced a voluntary ratings system that led to "the profligate use of obscene language, graphic sex scenes and more vivid, sadistic violence."

He often makes the same claims about movies today — that audiences reject dark subject matter foisted on them by the showbiz elite. It doesn't hold water. People flock to see films and TV shows that are far more graphic than anything 35 years ago. Americans also support a $10-billion-a-year pornography business largely supplied by cable and satellite TV conglomerates owned by people like Rupert Murdoch who hardly fit the Hollywood lefty stereotype. When I asked Medved why millions have embraced the smarmy sexual innuendo of "Desperate Housewives" or "Meet the Fockers," he explained: "It's a big country — America is not entirely populated with people with stable families who go to church every week."

I hate to break the news, but people who don't go to church are hardly the only people watching "Desperate Housewives" or downloading porn. Medved's ideology often gets in the way of his better judgment, as in a recent Wall Street Journal piece when, in the midst of a discussion of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" and Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," he unleashed the whopper that Moore's attacks on Paul Wolfowitz and other leading Jewish neoconservatives "reeks of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing." This from the man who berated anyone who dared make the charge of anti-Semitism against the Gibson film.

For Medved, when it comes to Hollywood, there's a wolf behind every door. But in his eagerness to further his brief against "Million Dollar Baby," Medved betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about the purpose of art. It doesn't exist solely to reinforce our faith. The most powerful art, from Sophocles to Shakespeare to Scorsese, seethes with provocation; it stirs our passion; pricks our conscience and tests our most firmly held beliefs. Medved seems to have forgotten that art isn't fair and balanced — it comes in shades of gray, and two sides of every argument are not always given equal weight.

What's really depressing about Medved's assault on "Million Dollar Baby" is that he's judging the film on its politics, not its art. Hearing him complain about its secret agenda, I couldn't help but imagine him in Shakespearean England, tugging on people's sleeves at the Globe Theatre, complaining that "Hamlet" was simply a play that endorsed Oedipal urges.

If Medved and other conservatives think their attacks will hurt "Baby's" Oscar chances, they're in for a rude awakening. If anything, I suspect academy voters will go out of their way to show their respect for a gifted filmmaker under attack. After all, the academy ignored smears against "A Beautiful Mind" that accused it of whitewashing its hero's sexuality. It also honored Roman Polanski for "The Pianist," even when critics said he was unworthy of an award because he'd once had sex with a 13-year-old girl and fled the country to avoid prosecution. Elia Kazan may have been an informer during the blacklist, but that didn't stop the academy from giving him a long-overdue lifetime achievement award.

So far Eastwood has kept his cool, saying his film is simply "supposed to make you think about the precariousness of life and how we handle it." I'm with him. This probably isn't a politically correct pipe dream, but I can't help but fantasize about what might happen if Eastwood bumped into Medved, say at a chummy GOP fundraiser. Clint may not pack his fabled .44 magnum anymore, but that shouldn't stop him from urging Medved to air his views by gently nudging him in the ribs and purring, "Make my day."

[Myxo]

These same right wing Christian focus groups that bash MDB are also the people who don't understand that the bible itself is art. How's that for irony?

[Thrindle]

These same right wing Christian focus groups that bash MDB are also the people who don't understand that the bible itself is art. How's that for irony?

[picolas]

coincidence

[brockly]

i was in the city with a few friends on wednesday before we all split up in the afternoon. anyway, me and two other friends were left in town with nothing to do, so we thought we'd catch a flick. we walked to the nearest theatre, only a couple of blocks away, and went in to find nobody sitting at the front counter. down the hall we could see the open doors of a cinema and a trailer for batman begins playing on the screen within. we looked at each other, smiled and walked in to a virtually empty theatre.... awsome!

anyway, i was hoping it was either going to be the aviator or closer, since i havent seen either of those yet, but it turned out to be million dollar baby. i havent been able to stop thinking about the film since my first veiwing, so i was up for seeing it a second time. both my friends, however, groaned. ofcourse, i told them to quite their bitchin since they didnt even pay to get in, and assured them it was a good flick. i realised i liked it alot more then i thought i did this time round. loved the dialogue, loved eastwood's direction, the acting is perfection and the boxing scenes are amazingly realistic and entertaining. the film didnt seem as sentimental or cheesy this time round, with the exception of maggies mum in the hospital. i think this film is a masterpiece. both my friends agreed it was good. and yes, i choked up again. im thinking about putting it in my top 3 of the year.

Swank was great, though overrated (not the best performance of the year).

i take that back.

[Myxo]

i was in the city with a few friends on wednesday before we all split up in the afternoon. anyway, me and two other friends were left in town with nothing to do, so we thought we'd catch a flick. we walked to the nearest theatre, only a couple of blocks away, and went in to find nobody sitting at the front counter. down the hall we could see the open doors of a cinema and a trailer for batman begins playing on the screen within. we looked at each other, smiled and walked in to a virtually empty theatre.... awsome!

anyway, i was hoping it was either going to be the aviator or closer, since i havent seen either of those yet, but it turned out to be million dollar baby. i havent been able to stop thinking about the film since my first veiwing, so i was up for seeing it a second time. both my friends, however, groaned. ofcourse, i told them to quite their bitchin since they didnt even pay to get in, and assured them it was a good flick. i realised i liked it alot more then i thought i did this time round. loved the dialogue, loved eastwood's direction, the acting is perfection and the boxing scenes are amazingly realistic and entertaining. the film didnt seem as sentimental or cheesy this time round, with the exception of maggies mum in the hospital. i think this film is a masterpiece. both my friends agreed it was good. and yes, i choked up again. im thinking about putting it in my top 3 of the year.

Swank was great, though overrated (not the best performance of the year).

i take that back.

Female in a leading role is a weak category this year. Swank has a great shot.

[NEON MERCURY]

spoilers


this shit was great man.  and a worthy follow up to another masterpeice, mystic river.  what i like about eastwood is that he 1.)gets top talent actors to rip through screenplays, 2.)creates such a rich environment, you could taste the sweat from that training center, the look and feel of his films are so authentic, 3.)his tyast efro the dark and depressing, 4.)the fact that his face is so wrinkled up and dusty, he has a good terxture facial onscreen look.

and i liked how the trailers actaully didnt give a film away for once.


and this shit reminded me of the pledge-alot.

[Alexandro]

I saw this twice already. I think it's a very good film but frankly I don't get all the fuzz. A well told story? Sure. Great performances? At least a couple.

But cmon people...what about all those manipulative cliches??? Were those really necessary for the movie to be as compelling?? Not for me, and I'm a little dissapointed with Eastwood for using cheap shots at sympathy for the main characters by making the other characters completely unrealistic on their behavior and attitudes. I'm talking about Maggie's family, a little more mean and they would be disney villains. No, you know what?? They're worst. It's like, they're not human beings, they're evil hillbillies. That black guy who punches Danger, did we needed him to be such a bad human being?? It's one thing to be ignorant or mean, or both, but it's another to have a soap opera villain there. Swank's main boxing rival even has some "here comes the bad guy" music when she comes out on the final fight. Even the guy that manages Maggie after Clint leaves her at the beggining can't leave the scene without making a hurtful cartoonish comment like "she can't fight worth a shit".

These things are completely unnecessary and took me out of the movie cause I felt they were trying to manipulate me, and it took me by surprise, taking in account that a day before I rented Mystic River and I couldn't believe this two were from the same director.

To give an example of the opposite, in Sideways, Giammati vistis his mom who, from the moment she appears, can't stop making hurtfull comments to him about his life, divorce, career, etc...everytime she speaks you sense his discomfort, but Alexander Payne doesn't force this things up your throat by making that mother artificially evil. He trust us to get this. We get she's hurting him, and we even forgive her before her scenes are over. In Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood seems to want you to hate all this people and only like four characters: Frankie, Maggie, Freeman and Danger. Everyone else are caricatures.

I liked everything else here. The cinematography is beautiful, like a Gordon Willis picture. And the performances, specially Swank, are brilliant. But this movie is vastly overrated. It's no masterpiece. Specially compared to Unforgiven.

[tpfkabi]

before i knew this was based on short stories, i really felt like the screenwriter came up with the ending and then thought, "how can i get here?" he flips a few channels........."ah, Rocky!" flips a few more.........."ah, Shawshank's playing on TBS for the billionth time!"

i don't know if the hype hurt of the fact that i knew the "big thing" was going to happen. i didn't know whom to or when or how, but was aware thanks to our great media system. i'm surprised that Morgan won. i love Morgan to death, but this is nothing new from him. he should have received honors for Shawshank and Se7en before this. heck, he should have got a nod for Levity then (at least he tried to mess with his voice on that one........i didn't think that was a good thing though).

i guess i'm a square.
*draws an invisible square in the air a la uma*

[MacGuffin]

Warner Home Video took its time, but it looks like the company is putting an effort into Million Dollar Baby. The multi-Oscar-winning film will be released on DVD on July 12 for $29.95 in a two-disc set, or a three-disc set that includes the soundtrack CD (similar to Mystic River last year) for $39.98.

The film will come in widescreen and full screen editions, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. There will be no commentary from director Clint Eastwood. Among the extras confirmed so far are:

James Lipton Takes On Three: A 25-minute roundtable done after the Oscars, so Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Hillary Swank have plenty to talk about.

Born to Fight: A look at real-life fighter Lucia Rijker (a boxer who has a role in the film and is quite possibly the toughest woman on the planet).

Producers Round 15: A behind-the-scenes feature.

[Boutros]

Looks great. Still not sure if I'm gonna buy it.

[Pozer]

por que?

[Finn]

You can get the dvd today on sale for $16.99 at Best Buy I think. The movie really is incredible. Very heartbreaking to say the least. Chilling musical score from Eastwood.

[NEON MERCURY]

You can get the dvd today on sale for $16.99 at Best Buy I think. The movie really is incredible. Very heartbreaking to say the least. Chilling musical score from Eastwood.

...i thought about buying this today but i think i would be wasting my money...the film doesnt have much repeat value.i think its a good story w/ incredible actign but.....um, its not as great as i remembered when i saw it in theatres...i still like it though....mystic river however gets better and better.......unforgiven sucks though

[modage]

wait three months and you will be able to get it for 9.99 at a video store.