Good but not satisfying

Rating: Null/10 (3 February 2005)

I liked it but I didn't love it. A completely character-driven story, Million Dollar Baby had excellently textured characters, brilliantly but subtly acted by the main three, Eastwood, Swank, and Freeman. The pace is easy; it carries the viewer along, keeping him involved without sweeping him away.
But if you're going to base your movie on the characters' distinctive, impressive, and sometimes surprising actions in the film, on what they have gone through off-screen in their pasts, don't you have an obligation to the viewer to reveal what happened in their pasts that account for how they're responding to the events of the present? In Freeman's case, the viewer gets satisfaction. Scrap (Freeman) reveals to Maggie (Swank), and thereby to the viewer, all about his 109 fights, how he lost his eye, what happened to result in him settling in as a janitor in Frankie's (Eastwood) gym, and why he risks his old body to come to Danger's defense.
But Scrap is a secondary character. You don't get the same satisfaction with the mains.
Frankie feels so guilty about something that happened between him and his daughter in the past that he goes to Mass and sends her a letter every week for years on end, and never gains absolution. What happened? Not knowing, the viewer is forced simply to accept at face value that Frankie would all but turn his life over to taking care of Maggie. The acting is so good, we can accept it, but the movie loses some of its power by not explaining to us.
Same for Maggie. She is willing to sacrifice her body for her dreams and she displays an ambition so powerful it's nearly superhuman. It all comes, we learn, from her relationship with her father. But who was he, what happened to him, and how was he such a powerful influence on her? The movie never tells us. And so, as Maggie dedicates herself to Frankie, again, we can accept it at face value, but since we don't know these important details about her, that's all we can do -- we cannot fully understand her. Thus, again, the movie loses some of its power.
Maybe I'm asking the impossible. Many will say, "Just appreciate the movie for the masterpiece of characterization and acting that it is." And I do. I do appreciate it. I appreciate how the characters interact, their dialog, the richness of their portrayals. I appreciate the movie's use of light and shadow to create mood, its subtle cinematography, its understated way of presenting the characters to the viewer.
Nonetheless, I am left not . . . quite . . . satisfied.
8 of 10