Originally posted 1/24/05
Million Dollar Baby
Director: Clint Eastwood
Writer: Paul Haggis, based on stories from Rope Burns by F.X. Toole
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Tom Rosenberg, Albert S. Ruddy, Paul Haggis
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Jay Baruchel, Brian O‘Byrne, Margo Martindale
Few movies these days genuinely create a place. Not some artificial set, but a living, breathing place that feels not only authentic, but filled with stories to tell. Million Dollar Baby, one of Clint Eastwood’s best films and one of the best films of 2004, gives us the Hit Pit, where would-be boxers come and go, an aging ex-fighter with one good eye (Morgan Freeman) does some cleaning and Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), a trainer and “the best cut man in the business”, watches over all.
And this is where Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) comes to pursue her dream. Actually, dream sounds like too soft a word for it – to become a great boxer is her destiny, and she’ll spend her life proving it to people if that’s what it takes.
We’ve seen so many stories of people who “won’t give up” that it’s become cliché, just slap together some defiant dialogue with a training montage and you’ve got your stock determined hero. So it’s a shock after all this time to see a three-dimensional rendering of this, to see a woman committed with every fiber to doing what everyone tells her can’t be done. If that means waking up before sunrise to jog, wrapping up leftovers at her waitressing job to eat, and saving every penny for a six-month membership at the Hit Pit, she does it, and Swank’s luminous performance (better even than her Oscar-winning role in Boys Don’t Cry) has us believing this woman exists. See how her body wastes no energy, how intensely she gazes; Swank has built a figure, mind and spirit for Maggie Fitzgerald, the 31-year-old from the South who’s spent half her life waiting tables and her whole life, in the words of “Scrap Iron” Dupris (Freeman), knowing one thing – “she was trash”.
Why this performance is so good I’m glad to not tell you, because Million Dollar Baby is about a lot more than boxing. There are plenty of matches in the ring, sure, and even a Big Fight. But Eastwood dares to make a story about people, not sports, so more important than any fight is the evolution of Fitzgerald’s relationship with Frankie.
Normally when you’d see the word “relationship”, given Hollywood’s history of May-December pairings you’d expect it to be romantic. And I would say that in the end there is deep and unbreakable love between these two characters, even if Frankie spends the first third of the movie wanting nothing to do with her and irritated by her presence (he can’t get rid of her, though, as unlike other Hit Pit residents she’s actually paid). But it’s much more complicated than romance, what develops between Frankie and MoCuishLa (a Gaelic ring nickname he provides for her, and about whose meaning he plays coy).
As a trainer and cut man, it’s Frankie’s job to get you ready for the ring, put you there, and after you’ve been bruised and bloodied, patch you up so the ring doctor will clear you for more bloodying. This might have something to do with why he’s gone to Mass every day for 23 years, although his exasperated priest (Brian O’Byrne) thinks it’s just to pester him with questions about the Trinity. It also might have something to do with the daughter who is spoken of but never seen. Guilt and punishment are Frankie’s everyday companions, and may be why he has a reputation of shying away from putting his fighters in big fights. “Always protect yourself” is his number one rule.
But Maggie is determined to have his tutelage, and like with every phase of their relationship the movie takes its time wearing down his resistance, letting its characters become real for us instead of using lazy movie shorthand then cutting to the fights. In one fantastic dialogue that you’d never see in another movie, Frankie and Scrap Iron spend an entire scene just arguing about the holes in Scrap’s socks.
We get to see that for these lifelong friends, getting under each others’ skin is like chess, they’ve been playing for so many years that it no longer matters who wins, providing a good game is everything. And a seemingly pointless bit like that turns out to have all the meaning in the world, because it clues us in to just how tight the bristly Frankie bonds himself to people for whom he feels responsible.
It’s taken decades, but with last year’s Mystic River and this film, perhaps Eastwood has finally convinced the world that he’s a first-rank filmmaker, not merely an actor who directs himself. As an actor here he gives one of his most vulnerable performances, and as a director he shows canny casting instincts and gets subtly natural and cohesive work out of his long-time technical collaborators (cinematographer Tom Stern, production designer Henry Bumstead, editor Joel Cox, many others). In its non-flashy way it’s a beautiful movie, filled with shadows and images that are just right.
It never overwhelms the actors, though, and they stretch to their best work under Eastwood’s care. I haven’t even had a chance to talk about Danger (Jay Baruchel), the skinny and eager kid from Texas who knows about as much about boxing as the Schofield Kid actually knew about killing. Or the story of Scrap’s 109th fight, not to mention the even better story of his 110th fight. But that’s what the Hit Pit’s like – full of great stories, any of them as good as any movie you saw this year. And the story of MoCuishLa is the best of them all.