February 16, 2005

How much less interested in a real discussion can you get?

I haven't really written much about Million Dollar Baby since early on and I've tried to be respectful of those who have hard feelings about the film. I think it would be unfair to call Miramax out for pushing Maggie Gallagher's anti-M$B agenda as Oscar balloting closes on Tuesday and The 'Maxers too smart to wait this late for smears, even if they wanted to push them.

So, if you haven't seen the film and don't want it spoiled, this is your warning to move along to tomorrow's column… maybe check out my day early piece on Chris Rock on MCN.

Okay…

One last warning…

And…

If you ever wonder why studios are overly cautious about the adult content of their films, all one needs to do is to read Maggie Gallagher's remarkably bent piece about Million Dollar Baby that went online yesterday.

Let's put aside the politics for a minute. There is, in my belief, room for smart, thoughtful people to disagree about life, death, poverty and euthanasia without calling each other names. (And I wish that some of the smart, thoughtful people who are responding to my blog would try harder to live by that notion.) But let's try to take an objective look, as best one can, at what Ms. Gallagher is saying about this film…

"Million Dollar Baby portrays murder as the ultimate act of love, teaching us the crippled human being killed wants death, deserves death, is better off dead."

Huh?

Is this woman out of her freakin' mind?!?!? Did she watch the whole movie? Is she remotely interested in the points that Eastwood and the author of the book and the screenwriter were making?

"The Godfather portrays cultural intermarriage as the primary cause of organized crime, teaching us that if Italians and non-Italians did not marry, inherently violent families like the Corleones would die off in a shower of their own violence.

"Citizen Kane portrays balding as the primary cause of inappropriate sexual relations, teaching us that as men lose their hair, their need to makeup for their loss with cause them to promote bad singers in hopes of a sexual reward."

"Batman portrays having your parents murdered by a guy who eventually has his face covered in acid causing him to permanently smile as the primary cause of running around in a latex suit fighting crime, teaching us that orphaned children will do crazy things even if they inherent enormous amounts of money and a loveable butler named Alfred."

You get the point.

To reduce Million Dollar Baby to being a movie about euthanasia is to utterly avoid the bulk of the movie with the intention of turning a compelling, complex film into a symbol of something it clearly never intended to be. I don't know if these whack jobs would be going after The Sea Inside if that film had gotten a stronger foothold in America. Probably not, since in that case, the movie really is about life and death and the case for euthanasia. The movie really does make the argument.

If Million Dollar Baby can be fairly criticized regarding its third act suicide attempts and eventual euthanizing, it would be for being the sucker punch that some feel it is. Two acts of the film are an underdog tail and the third act is about the dog being thrown under a bus. Yes, the family is a bit too black and white for a movie that is very much in the grays as well.

That said, the film is clearly about - for all of the main characters - owning your own life and having the courage of your convictions. The film is very arch, visually and in the acting style and in the storytelling. As I deconstructed elements of the film in the days and weeks after seeing it, I thought about details that seemed tough. How much did Maggie earn and why was Scrap living in the back room at the gym if Frankie was such a good guy and especially if he had made, say, $100,000 on Maggie's winnings in less than a year? If Maggie was so enraged by her family, did she then "write" a will and where did her money go? If Frankie really grew from his experience with Maggie, why didn't he make a greater effort than sending his letters, which were returned by habit after a while, to reconnect with his daughter?

I think all of these questions are valid. But I think that obsessing on them and using them as an argument against the film would be bad criticism, as it would miss the deliberate style of the filmmaking. In this film, as in Unforgiven and some of his other directorial efforts, Eastwood works in icons… then he adds touches of gray, I think, to relax the audience.

Scrap is a wise man and our narrator but, bottom line, he is a representation of the boxer who stayed in too long and who takes such complete responsibility for that choice that he doesn't feel he has the right to complain about his small boxed life.

Maggie Fitzgerald is the ultimate underdog, so far under that she missed escaping young, not getting to "the world" until late in her 20s/early in her 30s. Do waitresses really keep their tips in change in jars? Probably not. Don't waitresses get a meal at work? Probably. Couldn't someone like Maggie get a better waitress gig? For sure.

Frankie is the uber-hero who remains a schlub because he can't seem to allow himself to succeed. It seems that at one time he almost got the gold ring, but he didn't. And the pain of that experience - and presumably the aftermath so ugly that his daughter won't speak to him - has made him gunshy ever since. He is a high functioning cripple just waiting for the faith that will allow him to become himself again.

The first act establishes all of that. The second act puts the pieces together… Maggie's relentlessness pays off… Frankie starts to find his faith again… Scrap challenges them both to push into the places where it hurts.

And then, the third act… the big wall… and they smash right into it. And now, we know what the movie is really about. It's not "a brilliant piece of propaganda that works because it is based on something deeply true: Human beings are afraid of physical debilitation." It's a brilliant piece of filmmaking that works because it is based on the identifiable fear that Frankie has of losing again… and of taking another woman he loves with him into the abyss.

Is Maggie's injury and death a dramatic device that someone could see as cynical? I guess so. But the idea that the film, or even just its third act, is about a callous disregard for life can only be seen as an intentionally one-note myopic reading.

Of course, Ms. Gallagher is full of bromides that serve her political ideas, even if they grossly misrepresent either or both the movie and reality.

She writes: "Science may tell us that after an adjustment period, quadriplegics are about as happy after their accident as they were before."

Anyone who saw the documentary Murderball at Sundance will recognize that one of the joys of the film is that it celebrates the ability to have a full life in spite of significant physical limitations. At the same time, I don't think that any of the real people in the film would say that life was "as happy" as it was when then were not handicapped. Moreover, none of the people in that film were in-bed-fed-through-tubes-little-control quadriplegics. Of course, there is an argument to be made for happy lives led by many bed-ridden quadriplegics… but not all of them and I doubt you will find a significant percentage who say that they are "as happy after their accidents as before."

In fact, I would say that one of the key points of Murderball is that the men who play this aggressive sport of quadriplegic rugby have taken back control of their lives from a physical constriction that others see as the end of control in their lives. (For those who are confused, quadriplegia is defined as a significant loss of use of all four limbs, but can range from everything from partial paralysis to amputation… in this film, most of the people had little use of their legs and varying use of their arms and/or hands.) One of the featured side stories is about a young man who is struggling with the early part of his paraplegic experience after an accident and is trying to come to grips with what life has left for him.

Still, the statement by Ms. Gallagher in her article is thrown out there like some absolute fact, which is more callous and disregarding of the complexity of the issue than anything in Eastwood's movie.

Ms. Gallagher writes: "Out of our horror, we dehumanize those who suffer. And then we celebrate murder as an act of love."

Well, she has a general point about the human condition. We do tend to dehumanize others out of fear. And we sometimes fear people who are sick or have physical limitations that we do not identify with.

But I would ask for Ms. Gallagher to be much more specific about how M$B's Maggie Fitzgerald is dehumanized by the film. My sense is that she sees the choice of death as dehumanizing and then works backward… any choice that leads to that death is dehumanizing. But the film, even as Maggie lies in that bed, embraces her choices, from choosing to fight her family without Frankie's help to her choice to die… a choice, I might add, that Frankie will not accept until Maggie makes it clear that she will not accept a life in her condition… and in fact, has mutilated herself, biting her own tongue out twice in an effort to self-asphyxiate, before Frankie steps in.

There is something very brutal about the phrase, "You would put an animal down," when used in the context of a human life. It seems callous. And it can be callous. But it can also speak to a real emotion that people who care about the environment and about animals actually feel in a positive, powerful way.

For me, the issue is about choice… like so many arguments in which the right and the left claim to uphold choice and then look to restrict or enforce "choice," which is, of course, no choice at all for someone. Unlike The Sea Inside, in which a person who has lived with his need-help-to-eat-and-defecate quadriplegia for more than a decade before demanding the right to die, Million Dollar Baby's Maggie makes her decision in a hurry. And you could make a few arguments for the correctness of that dramatic choice in the film… from the style of filmmaking to Maggie's characteristic all-or-nothing mindset. And I can see how one could find it too quick… too many unanswered "does she know what good things she can still have in her life" questions. But it is an issue of choice. Does Maggie Fitzgerald have a right to choose death over life in that condition? Not in Ms. Gallagher's world.

I'm not saying that it not a topic worth fighting over. But in the end, I believe that human beings have the right to choice, so long as they are not infringing directly on others… whether in suicide, abortion, pornography, prostitution or smoking. I believe that the role of the media, the artist, churches, families, etc is to engage in the discussion of these issues with the individual, as we have found that legal enforcement of morality is most often a failure. There are exceptions, of course. And I am sure that I can find exceptions to my belief. But for the belief to hold water, there must be few holes.

I embrace Ms. Gallagher's right… nay, her obligation to argue against euthanasia if she believes that it is wrong. But I don't think she has the right to mistake the intent of a film like Million Dollar Baby as a crutch for that argument.

The great irony here is that Clint Eastwood famously leans right. But when the macho posture leans to "Make My Day," it is embraced. And when it leans to "Let her choose," he is not only reviled, his work is mislabeled as to make him appear emotionally detached from the act.

Ms. Gallagher writes: "Hilary Swank's character values herself only because she can make people cheer her performance. Take that away, and her life is not worth living."

Unbelievable. Just shockingly wrong.

The character is anything but a media whore. The whole movie, as regards this character, is about someone who no one else cares about, but who fights - literally and figuratively - to prove that she is of importance. Now, that says something sad about our culture… the idea that you need to have a publicly accepted mark of success to feel important. But what is the first thing this woman does when she makes some money? She reaches for her mother's love, which was so long withheld. And she is turned away.

We can further deconstruct and get into her mother's fear and the welfare state, which ironically would be a right wing kind of argument for the film. We can also get into whether a child can ever recover the love of a parent or a parent the love of a child.

But the blithe dismissal of the film's themes by Ms. Gallagher is so self-serving and embarrassingly ignorant, if she even believes her own rhetoric, as to be shocking.

Ms Gallagher also writes: "Today, creative, intelligent, decent Americans are paid good money by the rest of us decent, hard-working Americans to produce movies and columns that say, crippled people are better off dead; it is OK to wish them dead and even (sometimes) to kill them."

Grandstanding. But more importantly, this is not the theme of Million Dollar Baby.

Now I don't want to split hairs. The movie does suggest that some people, when crippled to the point that they will be attached to machines for the rest of their lives, want to die and that it is okay to help them die under some circumstances. But what Ms. Gallagher spins is this side argument of it being "OK to wish them dead" and okay to kill them.

Could anyone watch this film and really believef that Frankie's preference is that Maggie die? Whether or not you believe that he has a right to have a role in her suicide, has anyone seen this film and really thought he was happy to do the deed?

In the last two days, I find myself in tirades about right wing propagandists, even after I spent most of this election cycle whining for perspective and the acceptance of the political opinions of others. Maybe it is just a coincidence of the news cycle that has thrown this overreaching, one-note righty opinions in my face. Perhaps I have not read the lefty rants that would get my blood boiling too. But man, this is disheartening.

It's not so much that one side or the other will win. It's not like The Aviator, a movie about a young man who fornicates with many women, seducing them with his money and power, even if they can pretend it is the airplane (hey guys, next time you want to get laid by a movie star, take her up in your private jet and let her fly it… works every time) and has a stable of waitresses and cigarette girls stashed away, just waiting for him to come allow them to service him, years before he goes into a drug-addicted blur hiding out in his Las Vegas suite for years on end, is moral entertainment. Not the point. This is not about the Oscars and this is not about how much I like one movie or another.

The point is that this is a complex and important conversation, especially as the baby boom gets older and older and medicine gets better and better at extending life expectancy. But we can't get past throwing stones at one another… even when it comes to art. Sad.

READER OF THE DAY: MS NOTCHRISROCK writes: "t's beyond obvious that Drudge was trying to stir shit up. The only questions was as to why. When Rock's comments surfaced about putting his foot up Drudge's ass, the case was closed. This is Matt's way of trying to channel Walter Winchell.

As for Rock's comments, you must be one seriously white dude to say they are thoughtful. It's not thoughtful, it's sour grapes and reeks of resentment. Rock's film career has been a bust, and instead of being able to admit that it's his fault for picking such bad projects, he's obviously decided to blame The Man.

To say an Oscar is going to help Cheadle or Foxx moreso than Depp or Leo is nonsense. For Foxx to become the next Will Smith, it's not an Oscar but the box office of Miami Vice that will make the decision. For Cheadle, it's totally different. He doesn't seem to have the same motivations as Foxx, but perhaps I'm wrong.

The truth, is that Rock is talking solely about money. He can dress it up as he wants, but it's marquee head-lining, blockbuster projects that he's referring to when he says "There will be an absolute change in their lives if they win". Looking at Cheadle's resume, it would be harder for him to find better projects to be apart than he's already associated with. Look at the film he was nominated for. What, truly, is left, save headlining in a large summer vehicle like, I don't know, Miami Vice?

And this is the crux of Rock's problem. He's not about art. He never has been. If he was, he could have continued down that path after New Jack City and easily starred in one Spike Lee film at some point in the past two decades. Instead, look at his choices. Rock is motivated by mass adulation so he projects that as success for everyone. This is why he picked Mtv over the Oscars year after year. But now, with a nonexistent movie career, (how many bombs can one have), he's at a crossroads. So instead of saying "maybe Head of State, CB4, Sgt. Bilko, etc. weren't smart choices", he says "No one was thinking about me when they were making Cold Mountain."

E-ME: Is anything a movie brings up fair game for attack?

The Case for Sideways
The Case for The Aviator
The Case for Million Dollar Baby

Sundance Wrap-Up
Sundance Preview Part I
Sundance Preview Part 2