Million Dollar Baby (Spoiler Alert!)
Music: Snow Patrol – Run
Book: Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle – Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory
The show is in many ways a variation of an Aristotelian tragedy. The depiction of the classical “zero-to-hero-and back to zero again” is fundamental in its own right; one could’ve even predicted the plot- Frankie would initially provide resistance to training Maggie, Maggie would eventually turn into a superstar, Maggie would face setbacks along the way, predictably enough in her first ‘real’ fight, but she would pick herself up…
And yet this sense of simplicity and predictability is not the sense of déjà vu; rather, it was more akin to the sense of portent foreboding. For the simplicity present in the forward movement only serves to belie or perhaps, suppress, an intense potential of tragedy; indeed, I was personally on a perpetual stage of guessing—what further tragedy could strike Maggie and Frankie? Would she lose in the title fight? Would she herself leave Frankie for the finer opportunities provided by other managers? And this latent tension was so powerful that, in Maggie’s fight with the Blue Bear, it gave me a warped, ironic sense of increasing tragedy despite the former’s increasing advantages over the latter.
The point of tragedy struck hard despite all intellectual guessing done.
The remaining 20 mins or so is one of the most silently emotional concluding 20 mins of any of my screen encounters. The transition of Frankie as the man who gave Maggie spiritual life, her mentor, to a father, to finally the very man to take away her physical life is, for me, the masterpiece premise of the film.
“I did everything right”, the film suggested would be Maggie’s final thought, and notice how beautiful her last smile was.
Book: Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle – Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory
The show is in many ways a variation of an Aristotelian tragedy. The depiction of the classical “zero-to-hero-and back to zero again” is fundamental in its own right; one could’ve even predicted the plot- Frankie would initially provide resistance to training Maggie, Maggie would eventually turn into a superstar, Maggie would face setbacks along the way, predictably enough in her first ‘real’ fight, but she would pick herself up…
And yet this sense of simplicity and predictability is not the sense of déjà vu; rather, it was more akin to the sense of portent foreboding. For the simplicity present in the forward movement only serves to belie or perhaps, suppress, an intense potential of tragedy; indeed, I was personally on a perpetual stage of guessing—what further tragedy could strike Maggie and Frankie? Would she lose in the title fight? Would she herself leave Frankie for the finer opportunities provided by other managers? And this latent tension was so powerful that, in Maggie’s fight with the Blue Bear, it gave me a warped, ironic sense of increasing tragedy despite the former’s increasing advantages over the latter.
The point of tragedy struck hard despite all intellectual guessing done.
The remaining 20 mins or so is one of the most silently emotional concluding 20 mins of any of my screen encounters. The transition of Frankie as the man who gave Maggie spiritual life, her mentor, to a father, to finally the very man to take away her physical life is, for me, the masterpiece premise of the film.
“I did everything right”, the film suggested would be Maggie’s final thought, and notice how beautiful her last smile was.
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