Simple but profound story

Rating: Null/10 (30 January 2005)

No one or no movie can please everyone, but I'd like to think that even those who complain how depressing Million Dollar Baby is are suffering from a severe case of empathy. Just in case you are not too familiar with that territory of your emotion, it happens when one cares about someone else. After all, those same people don't get depressed after watching cartoonish, two-dimensional characters getting blown to bits in other movies. Calling M$B a boxing movie is like saying Amadeus was a biographic movie of Mozart. As all the critics and other reviewers point out, this movie is about human relationships, about a platonic but intense bond between two strangers who needed each other that transcends time, place, race and creed. That's why most viewers are singing praises of M$B. Having said that, the movie is full of light moments--Frankie tormenting a Catholic priest with questions about Holy Trinity and Immaculate Conception, a 'night socks/day socks' conversation between Scrap and Frankie. And let's not forget that delusional 'Danger' kid. With all these funny scenes and Maggie's meteoric rise as a female boxer, the ending may catch some viewers off-guard, but I don't think reading a 'spoiler' review will diminish your movie experience because M$B touches you at a much deeper level.
I like just about everything about the movie. And just about everything in it is understated, allowing us viewers to draw our own conclusions to fill the gaps. When Frankie and Maggie meet for the first time, he asks two questions, "Do I owe you money?" "Do I know your Mama?" implying right off the bat that he probably doesn't have a stellar financial/credit background, and that he probably didn't enjoy monogamous relationships in the past. The people who saw the film agree that the story is about a surrogate father-daughter love story. There's no question about that, and yet you'll notice Maggie and Frankie never express their love for each other in words, never utter those most overused words, I love you. We just know they do when Maggie says "I got nobody but you, Frankie," or when he takes a quick peek at her checkbook like a worried father checking to see if his girl is eating right. Or, when he finally reveals what she means to him by telling her the meaning of her ring name. Maggie asks for only two things from Frankie. Both times he grants the wish of his darling girl, grudgingly first time, against his own desire and belief second time. Though the movie runs over two hours, it has the quality of a short story. Some scenes have the feel of Rembrandt paintings. Boxing may be the integral part that bonds all three main characters, but the core of the story is the tie that binds Maggie and Frankie, and there's not much else in the film. We'll never know why he has a strained relationship with his own daughter (though it's not hard to imagine if you remember those two questions mentioned above), or what happens to Frankie at the end because that's another story. But I do wonder. The last scene is a shot of the roadside diner that Maggie and Frankie visited on the road trip back from Missouri. As the camera closes in, one can see the back of an old man at the counter through the dirty window pane. I bet most people thought, HOPED, it was Frankie, but we never get to see the face of the man. Yeah, I wonder...