Flawlessly written, acted and directed, MILLION DOLLAR BABY is being hymned and wreathed by the critics as the best film of 2004. They're absolutely right. "An old master's new masterpiece," the NEW YORK TIMES said in a review that was more of an open love letter to Eastwood than anything remotely resembling a critical analysis of the film itself. For once such honey-tongued critical adulation is fully merited. Dark, edgy, subtle and at times emotionally devastating, MILLION DOLLAR BABY represents the apotheosis of Eastwood's art - the most lucid and intelligently limned expression of his philosophy of the outsider, the noble loners whose personal codes of honour set them both above and apart from the compromised, corrupt societies they inhabit. The Boxing Ring As Metaphor For Life is a hoary trope almost as old as Hollywood itself, employed to varying effect in films as diverse as THE CHAMP, GOLDEN BOY, REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT, THE GREAT WHITE HOPE, FAT CITY, ROCKY and RAGING BULL. In MILLION DOLLAR BABY, though, Eastwood the director brings a fresh eye and an entirely fresh approach to both the setting and characterisations, virtually re-inventing this venerable sub-genre rather than simply recycling its conventions. Eastwood the actor is in fine form - a commanding if increasingly weather-beaten presence - as gym owner Frankie Dunn. A case study in loneliness, Dunn's creased face is a map of places you'd rather not go to and disappointment has clearly been a life-long companion. Co-stars Hilary Swank and the magnificent Morgan Freeman, playing Frankie's unlikely protegee Maggie Fitzgerald and friend "Scrap-Iron" Dupris, give what are without question the best performances of their respective careers: deftly underplayed, their roles provide emotionally overwhelming impacts more powerful than anything glimpsed in the film's riotous fight sequences. Forming an iron triangle forged from mutual dependence, Dunn and Dupris school the impulsive but untutored Maggie in both the techniques of boxing and the tradecraft of survival in a world pre-disposed to pulverise individualism. The canvas-floored square ring becomes the arena in which all three characters confront their various demons, battling for both victory and personal redemption. Paul Haggis' screenplay is itself a masterwork, improving on its source material without betraying the concise but compelling situations and superbly drawn characters found in F.X. Toole's short stories. And, finally, Eastwood the composer's elegiac but unobtrusive score is a minor classic of its kind, a requiem to both lost souls and lost causes. MILLION DOLLAR BABY is not only the best film released in 2004 it is also the most fully realised and richly textured major studio movie of the decade.
Reviews
3 Reviews
Children of Dune
(2003)
The sequel is never the equal?
16 March 2003
Satisfying, well-written and superbly acted sequel to the Sci-Fi Channel's DUNE mini-series - which was itself vastly superior to the rampant-phallic-symbolism-held-together-by-stamp-hinges-and-cobwebs David Lynch film version. A science fiction hybrid of sword-wielding Old Testament prophets, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, Toho giant-monsters-on-the-rampage flicks and the precepts of the 1970s ecological movement, CHILDREN OF DUNE is a storytelling and visual delight. F/X maestro Ernest Farino, who won the Emmy for his sterling work on the first DUNE mini-series, will likely make a repeat stroll to the podium when next year's visual effects award is handed out. He has created worlds and civilisations and creatures that are at once alien and familiar, wildly imaginative yet rooted in reality. Barring a ticket on the next space shuttle flight, this is the closest you will ever get to other worlds: Farino's effects are genuinely that good. In a production where all of the cast and crew clearly went beyond what their paycheques required of them, Farino's contributions are particularly satisfying. All in all, a magnificent undertaking; this is what that irritating salesman guest in FAWLTY TOWERS meant when he was talking about "televisual feasts."
The Kid Stays in the Picture
(2002)
Stars, sleaze, sex - and something close to brilliance
15 March 2003
Admit it. You're only interested in seeing this film because you think it's an A-list answer to an E! Hollywood True Story episode. Stars. Sleaze. Sex. Who could ask for anything more? The gossip quotient notwithstanding (and there's an awful lot of it), this turns out to be a thoughtful and intelligent profile of a man who is among the most thoughtful and intelligent producers ever to have helmed a major Hollywood studio. His biography reads like the synopsis of a Harold Robbins potboiler - former garment industry executive is cast in a movie when Irving Thalberg's widow spots him at a swimming pool, launching him on a life of success and excess in the film industry. But, as KID makes abundantly clear, Evans' spectacular if unlikely career path owes far more to the well-established link between the manic depressive temperament and creativity than CARPETBAGGERS-type pulp fiction. His seemingly boundless reserves of energy, when constructively channelled, can create works of cinematic art; when employed in less salubrious ways, the self-destructive results usually end up in the National Enquirer. Evans comes across as an admirable albeit eccentric character who, despite devastating illnesses and a slew of professional and personal setbacks, still retains the wit, charm and high-octane enthusiasm that once propelled him to the top of the greased pole that is Hollywood. Evans is probably better known today for his cocaine conviction, blink-and-you-missed-it marriage to Catherine Oxenberg and the tell-all bestselling autobiography this documentary is loosely based on. While he would be the first to admit that his epically scaled lapses have been grist for the tabloid mill, Evans also deserves to be remembered as the man who midwived such classics as ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE GODFATHER and that definitive Chandlerian dissection of Los Angeles, CHINATOWN. Evans is direct and honest about the creative tensions that helped to shape all of these films, acknowledging that he played the grain of sand to Polanski and Coppola's oysters - trying to irritate those directors into producing pearls. His reminiscences about the hot-and-cold wars that were waged behind the scenes on these and other pictures underscore the collaborative nature of filmmaking - and expose as the nonsense that it is the widely accepted fiction of director-as-author. You'll get gossip aplenty but you'll also get insight in this is a warts-and-all portrait of a unique Hollywood personality, a kid who, deservedly, still remains in the picture.
Tell Your Friends