November 23, 2004

Clint Eastwood just keeps delivering "The Crowning Achievement Of His Career."

He's always chosen moody projects to direct. Play Misty For Me, his first film behind the camera, was a very dark relationship-gone-wrong story made many years before Fatal Attraction. Bronco Billy and Honkytonk Man offered the dark side of the goofy genre he authored in Every Which Way But Loose. Pale Rider took the spaghetti western into a more serious territory.

But for me it was Bird that defined the maturity of Clint Eastwood as a director. The first film he directed and did not star in offered none of the superstar "Clint" we knew so well. And after The Rookie had many in Hollywood sending the then 60-year-old actor/director out to pasture, he came back with one of the seminal films of the 90s, the genre smashing Unforgiven. A Perfect World was too subtle for American tastes, but did big dollars overseas, one of the first films to recover so powerfully based on international box office over domestic. The Bridges of Madison County added an Eastwoodian muscularity to what was at heart a traditional "woman's picture." After five films of varied quality, he scored big again critically just last year with Mystic River at the ripe old age of 73.

And now, at 74, Eastwood has delivered his 25th film as a director. And, make no mistake, Million Dollar Baby is one of his very best.

The film has more in common with Eastwood's films that bend his own image rather than the breathtaking genre bending of Unforgiven. As a result, I don't feel that the film will have quite the reverberation in the history of cinema that his last Oscar winner did. But the reverberation on the Oscar season will be felt. The surprise is that it is Eastwood's likely nomination for Best Actor - and the very real chance he could win - and not the gentle, excellent performance by Morgan Freeman that is going to get the most attention. Hilary Swank is pretty much assured of her second Oscar nomination for her role as the 32-year-old girl boxer who just won't quit.

Here's the first thing you need to know about this film… you don't want to know much of anything before you see it. But you certainly want to see it. I don't even want to hint at why, generally or specifically. But more than any of the film this year, you just want to go to the theater to see the simple girl boxer film that Warner Bros. will have to deal with selling.

Be very, very careful about what you read about this film. I suppose that I would be derelict in my duty as a critic if I was in Roger Ebert's shoes and refused to discuss many of the details of the film… but I'm not in his shoes and you are not typical movie review readers. I won't even create a spoiler section for this film since, at this point, there is only one print of the film so very few of you can see this movie before the first week of December, at least. When we get to that time, my willingness to discuss details will expand. And of course, many of you will have to wait for the film's release on December 10.

Some of the defining characteristics of this film are its visual darkness, the Eastwood-written classical guitar score and Eastwood's long-standing interest in the relationships of depth and powerful silences.

To be honest, I feel that we have seen Morgan Freeman, who is so often brilliant, give similar performances before. Excellent, but not surprising. Hilary Swank, who has been limited since her Oscar by her physicality, has found the next film that fits. And Eastwood, as her minimalist director, could not be a better fit for her. She is at her best in this film when she says the least.

But again, it is Eastwood that is a revelation here, in front of the camera. This is his movie. His heart is at center. In Unforgiven, he was an icon in the middle of a whirlwind. Even though he was clearly the lead, in so many ways, it was Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman's movie. The film bent genre and those two characters were bent with it, a man of peace who was recklessly violent and a man of violence who was deeply peaceful, while Clint remained a force of nature, a man of black when engaged by the world and a man of white when not.

In this film, all of the big questions lie in Eastwood's character. Both Swank and Freeman are tremendous, but they do what they must. Eastwood is the one forced, with a couple of exceptions, to make decisions that have him questioning his entire 70-plus-year long life. And, like Unforgiven which Eastwood sat on for a long while before making while waiting for the right moment, this is a film that Eastwood had to age into. It wasn't very long ago that you wouldn't watch this film waiting for Eastwood to get into the ring to take a few swings at those smartass kids. But he has bigger emotions to fry here.

Truthfully, I don't know everything that Eastwood and screenwriter Paul Haggis, who adapted the F.X. Toole stories, were up to here. I'll have to see the movie again. There are small sub-stories that are resonant in the film, but seem to speak to larger themes that demand further attention.

And there are strokes here and there that I was not in love with. I would have liked a little more power in the acting jabs of a few supporting characters. Eastwood has always been incredibly generous about allowing working actors to have shots at bigger, more complex and demanding roles that other directors would. But the price is that sometimes, when he really needs a power hitter in those roles - like Richard Harris in Unforgiven or Laurence Fishburne in Mystic River - those moments come up a little sharp of what seems possible.

But that's very picky.

And I'm not meaning to get picky as this is not a review of the film, but a broad overview, trying to give you a good idea of why this film is so worth seeing… even if I'm not going to discuss the actual details of the movie.

The three central characters powerfully breakout into three dyads (Eastwood/Freeman, Eastwood/Swank, Freeman/Swank), each with their own significance and power, as well as having their own individual journeys. As I think about it, I want to prioritize this one or that, but the truth is, great moments in each relationship and each personal story spring to mind.

The funny thing is that this film feels more like an independent film than a studio release. And it is. Eastwood is - and has been for years - pretty much on his own, doing as he pleases at his home studio. And as such, threatens films like Finding Neverland and Kinsey more than others this Oscar season. But more on that in Thursday's Oscar column.

READER OF THE DAY: ABOVE THE TITLE writes: "Just for the record, Bird wasn't the first Eastwood-directed film in which he didn't appear. The 70's film Breezy, with William Holden and Kay Lenz has that honor.

As for what I'm hoping for with Million Dollar Baby...I'm hoping I get the work I expect from the director of Bird and Mystic River, and not disappointments of the director of True Crime and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Eastwood's directing style throughout his career reminds me a bit of Spielberg's "formula" period in the 80's--the style doesn't change to suit the material, so if the material doesn't lend itself to the style, the film suffers. The paradox is, Eastwood's one of the most economical and efficient directors around (the stories abound of him shooting "rehearsals" and then moving on to the next setup), but he favors a languid pace of storytelling that doesn't always complement his scripts. I always thought that's why, as director, his dramas are better than his action films."

E-ME: Let me know what you are hoping for from this film. And if you have a chance, check out Emanuel Levy's new weekly MCN column, Wide Angle, which starts today. The holiday schedule will have a THB tomorrow and Thursday and the 20 Weeks To Oscar column on Thursday at MCN before shutting down for the weekend… though a few blog entries along the way would hardly be a surprise.

Also, keep an eye on MCN not only for Emanuel's new column, but for a new blog from Ray Pride and then, on Friday, the premiere of Movie City Indie… plenty to chew on during the long, long movie news-free weekend.