Million Dollar Film-making.

Rating: 8/10 (24 December 2007)

I suppose when you discuss the most famous boxing films about people who didn't actually exist; nine out of ten film fans may point at Rocky for one reason or another and whilst I haven't seen Rocky at this present time, I would challenge them to give Million Dollar Baby a chance in trying to de-throne Rocky as the film at the top of their particular opinion. I hear and read that some say this is better than Raging Bull; well yes, as a boxing film I can categorically say it is better than Raging Bull but in terms of individual acting performance and character study it isn't  we really got to know La Motta in Raging Bull; we were there through everything and experienced it with him even if the actual boxing scenes in the film were rather poor.
In Million Dollar Baby, rather than put everything into one character in a blisteringly entertaining and effective way; Eastwood spreads the study around the whole cast: We discover what we need to know about Eddie Dupris (Freeman) when it's necessary and he fulfills his own little goal in the film; we come to learn what sort of a person Danger Barch (Baruchel) is and his story is more tragic than it is anything else and of course; there is the relationship between student and teacher that Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) and Maggie Fitzgerald (Swank) share which is the primary study of the film. First of all, I would in no way say this was a typical sports film where the hero starts off good; suffers a tragedy; works their way back up; gets a mentor and then gets ready for a final showdown with the bad guy. Million Dollar Baby sort of starts at point three in the last sentence and then skips the final point altogether as there is no antagonist in this film. Any 'showdown' that you could feasible use as an example would be when Maggie must face up to her redneck family who have shunned her her whole life up until a certain point but of course; this has nothing to do with sports: the film's genre.
Million Dollar Baby is a film that studies the space within the frame. It utilises a boxing ring, a gym and its surrounding areas as a statement about certain characters early on in the film in a brilliant manner. Frankie has his office which is set away from the rest of the gym, up high looking down on everything since he's the boss of the place  he is reminded as well as haunted by his previous success as a trainer with his masses of trophies and victories staring down further yet upon him. Danger is a lost and wondering soul who keeps saying he is going to challenge a champion boxer for a belt yet little does he know that boxing has long since retired: Danger occupies the ring most of the time which acts as a large and open space of nothingness as he repeats his dream he will never achieve and his boxing skills he cannot use. Eddie occupies a small room set away from the gym and everyone else; he is secluded from most of the action and occupies the lowest quality dwelling of the establishment; although not a racial element, this says things about his character that he is a cleaner; that his life is now simple after the dizzying highs and lows of his own boxing career.
Given these pieces of evidence, Maggie's own space is one of many. She is seen in the ring, in the gym, in a new home and later on in two new spaces which would give away the tragic event that propel the final third. Maggie persists on using the 'speed back' which perhaps reflects she wants to hit away in fast motion the depravity through relief of her bad life. Like most sports films, the middle section of the film usually contains a montage: I recently saw John Dahl's 'Rounders' which follows such a formula mentioned earlier on but cleverly informs us that Poker is in fact, a sport but in Million Dollar Baby; the obligatory montage doesn't seem to come yet at the same time, it's there. What I mean by this is that although Maggie knocks everyone out in the first round; this is due to the fact she has such a drive in her quest for the American Dream through boxing that she really is that good: every time we see the hero wipe the floor with everyone in a montage, maybe we roll our eyes but here I was sold  she's wiping the floor with them because she really is that determined and that skillful.
The film also challenges sexuality and what males find sexually attractive in films. Laura Mulvey once wrote that every film is shot for a male to watch and yet the women in Million Dollar Baby are hard bodied boxers who get sweaty, build their bodies and keep their hair short: there is nothing attractive in the film no matter how badly you get turned on by the thought of a woman beating you up. The evidence here is in the form of extremely quick shots of girls dressed in tight bikinis holding up numbers telling us what round it is in-between rounds. This is the film identifying that the boxers are not objects of the gaze whilst Eastwood knows he has to prove that they're not: the ring girls do this. Despite it's poor representation during the final fight where the final fighter is black and German (a black German girl!?) whose trainers dress in shady leather coats and look menacing; Million Dollar Baby succeeds through excellent spread characterisation and a stupendous narrative even if some of the people attending the fights look a little like they don't belong there but that's what the film's about: spaces; wrong place at the wrong time.