Year: 2004
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Jay Baruchel, Mike Colter, Lucia Rijker, Brían F. O'Byrne, Anthony Mackie, Margo Martindale, Riki Lindhome, Michael Peña, Bruce MacVittie, Marcus Chait
Director: Clint Eastwood
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Eastwood), Best Actress (Swank), Best Supporting Actor (Freeman), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing
It's weird, I know, but watching this movie for this blog was the first time I'd ever seen it. I didn't exactly avoid this movie; I kept meaning to give it a watch at some point. But somehow every time I thought about it, I would file it away under "later", even though I knew I really wanted to see it, mainly because when it was first released it got the kind of gushing response from critics that's pretty rare for any film, and it won four of its seven Oscar nomination, including Best Picture, which is also odd because at the start of Awards season it wasn't even on the slate. Eastwood finished it in record time and got a qualifying release run for it, and it took over. Before it was in the game, most people thought this would be the year Martin Scorsese finally won (for The Aviator) but there wasn't much in the way of backlash when this one powered through and took all the awards we'd thought would be Scorsese's.
What makes this even more odd is that this was marketed as, essentially, a female take on the Rocky story; in fact I saw more than one joke poster made up in PhotoShop of this film's poster with the words "Rocky with Breasts" replacing the title. It's not that at all; it's the story of two lonely people who need each other; both have an empty place inside them that is filled by the other. Frankie Dunn is an old boxing coach whose daughter stopped speaking to him years ago, and his attempts to reconnect with her are met with complete shut down. Maggie Fitzgerald is a woman who came from nothing, lost her father at an early age, and has nothing in her life worth talking about except her determination to become a boxer.
I was surprised, I admit, by how much this story was about Frankie as much as it was Maggie. I knew that Eastwood co-starred and that it was as much about their relationship as trainer and coach, and yes, I knew Eastwood took top billing and was campaigned and nominated as Best Actor, but I guess I assumed it was due to his also being the film's director and being unwilling to take a backseat to Swank, but honestly, the movie really is about both of them, equally, and in the beginning it's almost more his story than it is hers.
But I can see why it was Swank who captured all the headlines. Hers is very much the more demanding role; Eastwood's range has never been that broad and it doesn't broaden here at all (more on him in a moment) but Swank went through a ton to become Maggie. She worked out, training as a boxer with real-life boxer Lucia Rijker (who co-stars in this film as her main opponent) and is entirely convincing as a woman with white trash hillbilly roots. At least, eventually. In her earlier moments, her Missouri accent is hilarious instead of authentic and the first time she said the words "I don't rightly know" without irony, I was rolling my eyes (and I have a bit of an issue with how this film handles people from the south, which I'll get to later). But as the film progressed, I realized that I could totally buy her as a scrappy young woman with nothing to lose, because she doesn't have that "I come from Hollywood" look that most actresses her age have. She's definitely not afraid to "deglam", which is a term that got used a lot around the time of her win, which usually meant an attractive actress undergoing a make-up job that robs her of her Hollywood beauty. Think Nicole Kidman in The Hours or Charlize Theron in Monster, both of whom won before this film came around. Swank's "deglam" doesn't involve much make-up, instead relying on her posture, movements, voice and her willingness to get messed up; she spends several scenes covered in blood, sweat and tears (sometimes all at once) including a scene where she breaks her nose. But even once all that was cleaned off, she looked and felt like exactly what she was supposed to be; a white-trash wannabe boxer.
If anything, Swank's lack of a Hollywood look has worked against her since her two Oscar wins. It's been a long while since she's been in a movie anyone has heard of and/or had a role that was notable in a film. Which sucks, because she really is a talented actress, and I don't think it was her willingness to deglam that won her this Oscar but instead it was the fact that we totally believe her in this role. She doesn't look like an actress deglamming to sell the role of a boxer; she looks like a boxer.
Now let's talk about the ending, which is a bit of a spoiler, but not really since the movie earned some controversy over its ending, and by now if you don't know what it entails I have to assume you don't care about it. Maggie's boxing career comes to a sudden and abrupt end thanks to an overly aggressive opponent who doesn't care about rules and sucker-punches her between rounds. Left with not even the ability to move below the neck, Maggie's entire reason for living is now gone. She states many times in the film that if she doesn't have boxing, she doesn't have anything, and she holds to that. These scenes also probably went a long way toward her Oscar win, as it's been established that if you can make Oscar voters cry, they will be more likely to vote for you, but it's also where the controversy comes in as it seemed like a very ablist move; Disability Advocacy groups suggested that the whole "a life disabled is not a life worth living" message, which may or may not have been the film's intent; Eastwood insisted it wasn't, to be harmful. I can't decide if it's also out of character for Maggie, whose entire attitude is "never give up", but then, if you know you'll never box again and boxing is all you lived for...might not you consider it "giving up" to live as a crippled person dependent on machines to survive?
I'm not going to debate the morality of it as that's not the purpose of this blog, but I will say that Swank sells those scenes as well as she does the scenes of Maggie as a fully able-bodied young woman. One of her more triumphant scenes comes when she confronts her family while still in her hospital bed.
Did she deserve her Oscar, which was her second win? Maybe. I haven't seen Vera Drake yet (I've had so little time to watch movies lately) but she's already got competition from Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria Full of Grace.
Eastwood as Frankie is the flip side of the same coin; Eastwood has a way he acts that hardly ever changes much, but it does say something that no matter what, I always believe him. It's almost like Sean Connery; he plays Clint Eastwood so well that I never see him as "Clint Eastwood playing X" but as "X, a kind of Eastwood-type". As the cantankerous old trainer, Eastwood is right in his element and he earned his second, and so far last (let's face it; likely his last ever, as he's presently 89 and acting less and less) Best Actor nomination (his only other acting nod, also for Best Actor, was for Unforgiven, which also won him Best Director like this one did). A deserved nod? Perhaps. One wonders how different things would be had Eastwood not come on board, or had only acted instead of also directing (initially writer Paul Haggis was going to direct, and wanted Morgan Freeman to play Frankie, but Freeman wanted to play Scrap-Iron instead, so Eastwood was hired, then slid into the director's chair as well once filming scheduling issues with the film Crash prevented Haggis from directing both).
It's difficult to say what might have been in other circumstances, but Frankie is a layered role, with a lot for an actor to sink his teeth into. He's not just the "old coach" role, but he's also trying to learn to speak Gaelic for reasons the movie never explains, and in an attempt to atone for whatever he did that drove his daughter away, he's shown praying to a God he's not sure he believes in, and attending Mass daily, even if he does seem to take some joy in baiting the young, not-exactly patient priest (Brían F. O'Byrne). Near the film's beginning, he's shown to have an almost familial relationship with his concurrent client, Big Willie Little (Mike Colter), even helping him replace his wife's car, but unfortunately holding back on getting him a title fight, telling him, not for the first time "maybe you'll be ready next year." Willie eventually drops him, gets a title fight almost immediately and wins, which plays some role in Frankie's eventual coming around to training Maggie.
See, at first, he's a typical old chauvinist, saying he won't train girls and that "girly tough ain't enough", but later elaborating further, telling Maggie that she's too old and nowhere near far enough along for him to turn her into a real fighter before she's too old for actual fights. But her persistence eventually wins him over and gradually she goes from not knowing how to hit a bag or move her feet to knocking all her opponents out in the first round, prompting Frankie to move her up a weight class; something he's always refused to do as it involves too much risk. It also becomes obvious that the two of them are forming the father-daughter bond neither of them has with their biological counterparts, especially when he has a robe made for her with the name "Mo chuisle" sewn into it, which, and this is a bit of a spoiler, is a Gaelic term that means "My beloved" and also "my blood".
As a director, Eastwood does a fine job, and I admit I've always thought of him more as a director who occasionally acts, but I'm not sure he's really "the best" director. I'm not the most qualified to judge here, because as I understand it, directing is kinda being in charge of everything; where the camera goes, what gets focus and what doesn't, the performances, all of it, and in that case there's nothing here to point out as wrong, but nothing that really made me go "okay, that's why he won".
Morgan Freeman plays Eddie "Scrap-Iron" DuPris, manager and maintenance man for Frankie's gym. He's a former fighter himself who won 109 fights, but lost his sight in one eye after his last one. This is the movie that won Freeman his (so far) only Oscar, after four nominations, and most of the critics at the time agreed that while his win wasn't exactly "undeserved", it really was a career Oscar rather than one earned by this film alone. And I have to agree; Freeman is always very watchable, even when phoning it in, and extremely likeable, and he's both here, but he's not given a ton to work with. He does get one incredible scene where he shows that he might be old and might be well past his glory days, but you still don't want to push him too far. It's a real stand-up-and-cheer moment but it's also unfortunately too short. Scrap is also the film's narrator, which might have gone some way toward his win as well. Personally, I think Freeman's best role was the convict Red in The Shawshank Redemption and it still bugs me that he didn't win for that one (he narrated that one, too) so, like many, I will probably always think of his win here as the Academy awarding him for Shawshank a bit too late.
The part of the movie I liked least (which isn't to say it turned me completely off) was its portrayal of southerners. Maggie herself is a southerner but she wants to escape "that life"; her white trash in the extreme family, including a fat lazy mother (Margo Martindale) who refuses to lift a hand except to help herself, a sister (Riki Lindhome) cheating the welfare system and a jailbird brother (Marcus Chait). Maggie's family can be summed up in one sentence, delivered early by Maggie herself: "my sister's cheating the welfare system by pretending one of her babies is still alive". I mean...yow. There's a scene where she uses the money from her fighting wins to buy her mother a house (while Maggie herself continues to live in squalor). Her mom's reaction? Anger, because owning a home might mean she can't collect welfare anymore, and asking Maggie why she didn't just give her the money? This comes back to bite her, though, in one of the most satisfying scenes, when her family shows up after the accident, not to comfort her (of course not; these people are about as comforting as a gravel pit full of broken glass) but to try and get her to sign all her assets over to them. She tells them she knows her mother never signed the lease for the new house (despite going ahead and moving in) so if they ever come back, she'll sell the house right out from under them.
If it were just Maggie's family, I'd be okay with it because God knows horrid rednecks like this exist, but the only other southerner in the film is an uneducated (possibly simple) young Texan calling himself (really) Dangerous Dillard Fighting Flippo Bam-Bam Barch, as if he couldn't make up his mind what his ring name would be, but you can call him "Danger", as most of the other characters do. Danger (Jay Baruchel) can't fight, hasn't paid any gym dues (unlike Maggie, whose paying six months up front is why Frankie doesn't just tell her to stop coming around) and while he means no harm, also is pretty behind the times when it comes to acceptable language (check out the first thing he says to Scrap, and Scrap's rather hilarious response). He thinks he's gonna be the next Welterweight champion, but watching him even just warming up is pretty pathetic, especially as he keeps loudly challenging a retired Welterweight champ (who's nowhere around) to a fight. Scrap talks about how fighting is "mostly heart" but a fighter who's nothing but heart is looking for a beat-down, which is what Danger is. Honestly, Danger is such an over-the-top caricature of a southern good ol' boy that it's almost like he walked in from another movie, and he's so dumb one wonders how he managed to get his gloves on.
Almost makes one think the writer (either FX O'Toole who wrote the short stories this movie is based on, or Haggis himself) has an issue with southerners. But it's not enough to really over-turn my overall opinion.
Was this movie really deserving of its four wins, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor? Honestly, I'm not sure. It was very good, but I'm not sure I'm ready to call it the best. I've seen two of its competitors in the past and was a bit more impressed by both of them, and due to Swank's kinda weird beginning here, I'm wondering if Winslet wasn't the better performance in this category, but we'll decide that two posts from now.
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