Craft VS Content

Rating: 6/10 (13 October 2015)

Raging Bull is a portrait of boxer Jake LaMotta, and is often hailed as the greatest film of the 80s. Tellingly, it is most commonly revered by people who have a certain knowledge of or interest in the craft of filmmaking. What could possibly be wrong with that?
Martin Scorsese is the most enduring New Hollywood director after Steven Spielberg, and, unlike the latter, managed to more often than not succeed commercially without giving in to audience tastes and expectations, hence the higher level of respect he receives from critical circles. His earlier work in particular was a perfect combination of raw, powerful storytelling with an encyclopedic knowledge of filmmaking technique, and in Robert De Niro and Paul Schrader he found worthy, reliable collaborators with the talent to create these rage-infused films. It is strange to consider that this particular project was not one he originally wanted to make.
Robert De Niro nursed a fascination with La Motta and threw years of energy into convincing both Schrader and Scorsese to make a film about him, often to the confusion of those around him. During one story meeting, a studio exec asked the dream team why they wanted to make a film lionizing this "cockroach". That is perhaps the heart of the divisive issue.
Raging Bull is a masterpiece of direction, one of the most alluringly shot films you will ever see, and contains some of the best performances ever committed to celluloid. But, expert character study that it is, it is that of a truly repugnant individual, whom it does indeed lionize beyond reason, and upon whom it forces an awkward and undeserved absolution ("I once was blind but now I see"?), the result of a, at the time, personally burnt-out Scorsese forcing his own Christian sense of renewal onto an incompatible character.
Raging Bull is, and should be, mandatory viewing for anyone interested in filmmaking or performance. However, it is more "important" than enjoyable, almost more significant for its technical virtues and the bygone creative era it represents, easy to admire but very hard to love. Its points of contention are the same that feed such heated debate around other classics, most notoriously 2001 A Space Odyssey, worlds apart yet similar in that it succeeds as a work of art while failing as a story and piece of entertainment. Love it or hate it for what it has to say, there is beauty and artistry in how it says it.
To film historians and a majority of critics, Raging Bull ended 80s cinema by opening it, saying all there was to say. But to me, its fellow black-and-white best picture nominee that year (also containing the resounding cry "I am not an animal") is a more affecting, more enduring statement about human nature than Raging Bull turned out to be.