Television Writer Hits the Big Time

Rating: 3/10 (29 May 2005)

This movie won the Academy Award for best picture, and has been hailed in many quarters as profound and moving. Either I am getting more and more out-of-touch with modern Western (maybe American) sensibility, or some kind of hyper-calculated dark force is taking over the dramatic arts (American TV and movies especially). I could barely stay awake as I watched it. The movie starts out oddly flat and moves slowly through one calculated scene after another. In terms of the boxing background and the fight scenes, although maybe it is more accurate than Rocky, it certainly was only technically average. Of course, the cinematography is first-rate, and the three lead actors, Eastwood, Swank and Freeman, all have great screen presence, but the movie smelled of melodrama from beginning to end and it left me feeling strangely cold. I think we need a new phrase to describe the kind of mood this movie evinced. What comes to mind for me is 'cynical corniness.' The same phrase aptly applies to what has metastasized on American television in recent years, i.e., the CSI franchise and the Law and Order franchise.
Paul Haggis is the television writer who wrote the screenplay, and he transferred into the film the same sensibility that has taken over much of TV: Protagonists (heroes) are cynical, cold, and sardonic, yet totally loved for all their deficiencies, and characters who are weird or odd are definitely worthless and possibly evil. However, to conceal the cynicism of this dark social matrix, the de rigueur of this sensibility is to press the correct socio-political buttons. If the pathos is false and calculated, it is much harder for an audience to detect it when the drama is cornered with progressively correct structures--i.e., Hilary Swank as the poor, female boxer. So when she is paralyzed in a fight at the cusp of being champion by a ridiculously evil tactic by the 'weird other' (the other boxer), then we are supposed to feel so sad as she is heroically euthanized on her request by America's Tough-Guy-With-A-Heart Hero, Clint Eastwood (with wise black man Morgan Freeman as a muse). It is a foolproof, bathetic structure that hides from the audience the deeper, more general bigotry and facile stereotyping in the film. For example, Swank's character comes from white trash, and the way the movie shows this is done with all the subtlety of a bad cartoon. Her amazing progress as a fighter is extremely corny. She goes from wide-eyed ingenue to a totally dominant fighter in awkward and unrealistic steps. But because we have Clint as the cynical foil, and Morgan Freeman looming around in his typical saint role, many of the contrived scenes somehow served as ballast to keep this turkey afloat.
The pathetic, southern, white-boy, wannabee boxer named 'Danger' also fills a void in the film by being just the right category of odd thing that the modern, hip person can hate safely. His vibe is corny and his existence is totally unrealistic in a gritty, underground boxing gym, but, just like Clint's, Morgan's and Hilary's, his character constitutes exactly the right socio-political button. I have to be careful here: I am not trying to give ammunition to right-wingers. I have no problem with progressive ideals, i.e., women being tough as men, and freedom of choice over dogma. The problem I have is when these ideals are simply buttresses to conceal and build a calculated cynicism. This ideological process is manifesting very strongly on American television right now and, I fear, it is spreading to the movies. Can't anyone else see this???