Misunderstood masterpiece.

Rating: 10/10 (24 April 1999)

Martin Scorsese is on record as saying that he has not yet made a truly great film, something up to the standard of The Searchers, Citizen Kane, Eight and a Half, The Leopard, or The Red Shoes. Perhaps he's right. However, he can boast of at least one film that comes awfully close to that olympian standard, Raging Bull. When Scorsese made Raging Bull, he was seriously thinking of it as a terminal work. He was going to end his career in Hollywood, move to Italy, and make documentaries about the lives of the saints. For better or worse,He chose not to. Still, retirement WAS seriously on his mind, and because of that, Scorsese poured all his thoughts, all his feelings, all of his knowledge of cinema into this, one of the most troubling- and unforgettable films- ever made. I believe that I have seen Raging Bull nearly a dozen times, and I see new meanings and surprising nuances in it every time. Here I can offer only a few comments, both of which are paradoxical. The first is that Raging Bull is a very violent film about love; the second is that it succeeds in portraying Jake Lamotta because it is just as much about Marty Scorsese as it is about Jake LaMotta. There are five love stories in Raging Bull. The first is the story of Joey Lamottas love for his dull-witted, stubborn, hot-tempered , 'crazy ' brother. The second is Vicky Lamottas equally passionate love for her brutish, insanely jealous husband.The third is the story of Jakes love of himself, which begins as a brutish, jealous, self-loathing, profoundly selfish love, and slowly and in a halting, confused way, becomes a very different self appraisal, the recognition that he is not an ANIMAL, but a man. The Fourth love is that of Marty Scorsese himself, both for the film medium and for the characters in his best films. The fifth may sound crazy, but I think it is present throughout the film. It is the love of God.It would take a lot more space than I have here, but I would assert that Raging Bull DOES NOT portray a world in which God is absent; God even loves someone as brutish, as short-sighted, as vulgar and as morally obtuse as Jake. Indeed , Scorsese has even claimed that Jake comes close to God without realizing it. My second claim is that Raging Bull is autobiographical. But, in a sense, almost all of Scorsese's films are, whether directly or indirectly. For me , Raging Bull is autobiographical in that Marty is, to a large extent, reflecting himself in Jake. Scorsese, the "gangster-priest' is confessing his sins and exorcising his demons. In this way, he is inviting all of his viewers to undertake a similar act of self examination, confession, and exorcism. This is one ( but not the only one) of the reasons that Raging Bull ends with a quote from Johns Gospel and a dedication to Haig Manoogian, who taught Marty how to look into himself and see.