Dear Tom, Bill and no one in particular,
Michael Medved is indeed a loathsome hack, but you really shouldn't assume that the moviegoing audience isn't as dense as he seems to think they are. Half this country is below average, even by our comparatively lower standards, and I've seen movies with some amazingly moronic people. Like shitheads who cheered when [I think] Sean Penn machine-gunned the kidnapped Vietnamese girl in CASUALTIES OF WAR, or who complained about how impossible it was to follow the story arc of PULP FICTION. You'd need to wire a car battery into the left half of their cerebrums to stimulate a discussion with these fucking lunkheads.
MILLION DOLLAR BABY clearly was not marketed to people who want to be entertained but also want to be given a meaty ethical topic to discuss when the theater lights came back on; it was presented as feelgood underdog-sports movie, a girl ROCKY, starring good ol' Clint Eastwood and plucky Hillary Swank. If a few special-interest groups and douchebags like Medved and Rush Limbaugh hadn't raised a stink about the extreme left turn the narrative takes, people would have no idea the movie was anything other than a typical boxing movie until they saw it.
As for the difference between Frankie Dunn and Travis Bickle: Only one of their creators spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and testified before Congress to present an agenda that their film also pushes. Not only that, Eastwood's movie stacks its world's deck to grind his axe; there are far too many absurdly implausible things in the post-injury part of the film for it all to be a coincidence. For example: In hospitals and nursing homes, quadriplegics are diligently moved often to prevent bed sores, and regularly checked for the little bastards; a leg sore would have a snowball's chance in Hell of going uncaught long enough require amputation of the limb. I'm pretty sure Maggie wasn't in the home long enough to have even gotten a bed sore in the first place.
If she wanted to die, she could simply refuse further treatment; but the movie has to swing for the parking lot by having American Icon and Living Legend Clint Eastwood sneak into her nursing home [past armed security guards, no less!] to pull the plug on her respirator. [And then give her a big shot of adrenalin, which didn't make any sense and seemed pretty shitty to me -- that would make her death slower and more painful -- but Frankie's still supposed to be the smartest, most capable guy in the idiot world Eastwood created for him.] It's not that "Clint Eastwood did it to that sweet Hilary Swank - so it must be the right thing to do in all occasions!" it's that the movie doesn't have any doubt that it was the right thing to do.
Ebert's right in that the movie's very well-crafted, but he's merely copping out about addressing that it's an ugly hybrid of the standard-issue Hollywood male senior-citizen power fantasy and Eastwood's personal grudge against those uppity cripples who successfully sued him.
Does anyone else miss the good old days when "critics" like Ebert only trotted out the it's-the-way-the-content-is-presented-not-the-actual-content concept to engage a work made in an almost-alien social/political context, like Leni Riefenstahl's TRIUMPH OF THE WILL or D.W. Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION? I think that's the only thing that offends me personally about the MDB hoo-ha. I don't mind Eastwood prosecuting his vendetta in the form of a feature film, and I certainly don't care that the "ending" was ruined for me; the downer half was the only reason I had any interest in the movie in the first place. I've never seen THE NEXT KARATE KID, but I would if I heard that Swank's teen character loses the big karate tournament near film's end and commits seppuku in front of Mr. Miyagi [who is Okinawan, not Japanese, but whatever], because the director is a member of the Church of Euthanasia or somesuch. Anyway, it's not like Eastwood doesn't go Western Union and telegraph the fuck out of the ending the moment you learn that Maggie's been crippled.
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4 comments:
"Half this country is below average"
Yes, it would have to be. Meanwhile, half this country is above average. I prefer things be aimed toward that half.
"people would have no idea the movie was anything other than a typical boxing movie until they saw it"
What a terrible thing that is, to have created a motion picture that is more than its ad campaign, that transcends the audience's expectations, that provokes thought and discussion, that stays with you long after the film is over.
"the movie doesn't have any doubt that it was the right thing to do"
So all that agonizing Clint went through, the tearful consultation with his priest -- that was left out of the print that you saw, was it?
"Eastwood's personal grudge against those uppity cripples who successfully sued him"
So the message of the film, in your eyes, is that all cripples must die? You really believe Eastwood is advocating the death of all quadraplegics?
"Leni Riefenstahl's TRIUMPH OF THE WILL or D.W. Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION"
You're comparing Clint and the movie not just to Nazis, but the Ku Klux Klan as well? Wow, that's Godwin's Law squared. Conversation over. (Of course, my invoking Godwin's Law triggers Quirk's Exception, but I can live with that.)
Well, Milo, you're engaging the movie much more than Medved has in any discussion of the film that I've seen – his main arguing point seems to be since Eastwood is such a big movie icon, than anything he does in a movie is an automatic endorsement of that action. (Sure wish I'd known that when I saw Tightrope.)
hey bill,
Yep, Medved is a total hack. I would give pay good money to know what he and his ideology prism make of those orangutan movies Eastwood made in the early '80s, though.
howdy tom,
You prefer that Hollywood movies be aimed toward the upper half of the population, huh? That's nice. You're right that it's very nice to see a movie that's more than its advertising. It's a shame that MILLION DOLLAR BABY apparently could only transcend the expectations of an audience who mostly expected a female ROCKY movie by indulging in intellectual dishonesty and fantastical manipulation, but so long as the thought and discussion it provokes is generally along the lines of "Good grief, was that movie totally full of shit or what," then that's nice, too.
The priest stuff was in the version I saw, thanks for your concern, but I think the print was missing some scenes where Maggie also agonizes and consults with experts about euthanasia, since, um, it would be her choice to make in real life, or at least an honestly made movie. It seemed to me that the agonizing and consulting Frankie does is in the film to underline that it was up to him to decide what to do; the doctors' opinions don't even register and the priest is useless, so it was up to our granite-chinned hero to clench his teeth and make the hard decision on his own.
I think the movie's too muddled to have a clear message, and I doubt Eastwood is misanthropic enough to hang a film on the concept that using one's brawn and fists can pull a person out of a horrible, dead-end existence but a life with a permanently broken body but intact mind is not worth living for an instant. [Also, doping out The Message of a movie or book is a mug's game.] But it is interesting that Maggie overcomes her limited resources, dead-end life and upbringing to thrive in a field that isn't very woman-friendly and handily absorbs the ferocious physical and mental damage boxers take in the ring -- but folds like a busted flush and wants to die shortly after she's injured. Life as a quad can't be much fun, but wouldn't a born fighter like Maggie, uh, fight? The first two acts nearly clobber you silly in making it clear that this scrappy, cute underdog isn't gonna let nuttin' stop her, especially once Clint stands tall in her corner.
"You're comparing Clint and the movie not just to Nazis, but the Ku Klux Klan as well? Wow, that's Godwin's Law squared. Conversation over. (Of course, my invoking Godwin's Law triggers Quirk's Exception, but I can live with that.)"
So, if the conversation's over, how did your response get posted? I don't understand how that works. Regardless, I'm glad that you can live with invoking a law because I said that critics shouldn't use a tool meant for morally-objectionable works of art made in an alien context on a hokey Hollywood movie just so they can sidestep addressing the unethical hoo-ha Eastwood shoehorned into it. [If it makes you feel better, I don't like seeing critics use the style copout to avoid pointing out that a wonderfully made movie, like OCEAN'S ELEVEN, is utterly vapid. Is a work with a fraudulent viewpoint better or worse than one with no POV at all? Discuss.] That's nice too. But you would probably disagree with all this if you read it, so I have no choice but to hang up on you now. Goodbye, Tom the Dog. Goobye.
Oh, by the way -- I am pro-euthanasia across the board and admire quite a few of Eastwood's movies, but MDB is a well-made crappy movie that will probably do for the Right to Die what Janet Jackson's tit did for the Right to Free Speech. But I'm glad you enjoyed the movie. OK, goodbye now. =click= ...... ...... ...... eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee
I will think better of Michael Medved if he starts looking at all the movie marketing campaigns and dissecting them in print for when they're misleading, instead of only the ones that will get him on TV and/or stand in the way of his ass-clenched view of the world.
I would think that most Clint Eastwood movies now should be marketed as being against suntanning and for high rep freeweight work as a long-term fitness solution.
Tom Spurgeon
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