Eastwood's greatest film.

Rating: 10/10 (7 June 2008)

Let me quote one viewer's criticism of this wonderful film:
"Am I the only one who found the ending to be completely contrived, if not nonsensical? This has nothing to do with the fact that she died, and that it was sad. I have no problem with sad endings, when they MAKE SENSE. The thing I don't understand is WHY she had to die? In what way did it help the narrative, the plot, the story, or the lesson to be drawn from it? Here we have a story about a girl, her dream, and her struggle to live out that dream, despite her horrible family, and all the odds being against her, and as she is about to realize even the tiniest portion of that dream: BLAM, you're paralyzed... Why that? To me it seemed like it came TOTALLY out of left-field. It was like Eastwood had this great movie going, had everything worked out perfectly and suddenly realized that it was getting too long and he needed to end it and that's the first thing he could come up with.
"It just didn't make sense in relation to the rest of the story. Now some people will say 'well that's life, sometimes *beep* happens.' And yeah, that is life, but MDB isn't life, it's a movie. Her injury seemed totally useless and left me wondering where in the hell Eastwood pulled that idea from.
"Mystic River = Eastwood movie with a SAD, SAD, SAD ending, but one that MADE SENSE."
First off, the so-called ending is actually the final third of the film. So stop calling it "the ending"! Second, note the emphasis on WHY and MAKING SENSE. This is one viewer who is stuck on plot and thinks that if an incident does not advance the plot in some overtly obvious manner then it is somehow faulty. The final portion of the film wasn't there to "help the narrative." The movie is ABOUT this part of the story, right from the very beginning. And yes, sometimes "*beep* happens," and that's life, and some movies are about life, as opposed to those that are about car crashes or explosions or Adam Sandler making his girlfriends laugh or Robin Williams impersonating a woman. If the controversial plot turn were arbitrary, then it would have sunk the film; life can be random, good art cannot be random. If it seeks to create a story that reflects life's randomness, there must be an underlying logic at work, and in Million Dollar Baby there certainly is. Here we have a strong, determined woman who dragged herself out of a dead-end life to achieve heights of athletic fame and accomplishments as a prizefighter. As is so often the case in life much of our fates are left to chance, and in a single, random, fateful moment in the ring (not her bathtub or street corner or local candy shop, so there is an element of plot causality after all), all that she had built for herself was taken away. Now she's left in a position where her pride and integrity are compromised, because she was once a great fighter and she is now a vegetable who feels she no longer has a reason to live -- and so she turns for help to the manager with whom she had her most intimate relationship. The man who helped her become what she was now has to ponder whether his responsibility to her is to help her live or help her die. (Unlike some of those who both love and hate this film, I don't think it makes a definite "pro-euthanasia" stance.) In other words, people who are in the position of begging for a mercy killing have lives that preceded their predicament, and Million Dollar Baby lets us experience that. Of course, grasping this requires some mental dexterity not possessed by those whose perspectives are purely linear. And those who think that movies are not life, "just movies" (whatever that means) will be completely lost. Sure, art can't do it the same way life can, but I think I covered that already earlier in this paragraph.
In other words, the story of Million Dollar Baby is more about two characters and a relationship than the construct we call "plot." Some movies are very plot-driven, and there is nothing innately inferior in that. Some of them are great films. They can, in their own way, reveal just as much about our external or interior lives. I even like outright action movies when I feel there's creativity and wit on display. I think Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan) is a great American writer. I don't think any work of "literary fiction" has captured so incisively the workings of our sexual sub-conscious as Dracula. I have a soft spot for John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China, for crying out loud. I mention these seemingly irrelevant and diffuse trivia lest I be accused of "highbrow" elitism.
Many works of art are great because they help us understand human nature better (although I don't agree with another viewer who feels that great films try "to improve the world at least a little bit"; some works of art may try to do this, but I feel this is incidental to what makes them great). Million Dollar Baby falls into this latter category of art that sheds light on what one nineteenth century writer (I forget who) called "the human heart in conflict with itself."