catapult magazine

What do people think of this? I hear a lot of contoversy about it. But is it good? i like good controversy.

I posted this in the Film 2004 category a couple weeks ago with no response:

OK, while the blizzard raged outside Harvard Square, watched Million Dollar Baby last night. Very well put together. Everyone involved did an excellent job. Didn’t like the way the whole thing played out, though. How much does story have to do with being a great film? To me, it’s a big deal. I loved the first half, disliked the second half. My friends that would like the way it ended would have a difficult time getting through the first half. Does anyone want to talk about why this movie is so great? Obviously Morgan Freeman is THE BEST EVER. He could narrate a Smurfs movie and it might get nominated by the academy. Other than that, though, what is redemptive about this movie?

I finally saw Million Dollar Baby and way too late. Like Mystic River, I don’t want to watch anything else right after it. Just want to let those dark shadows hang over my soul a bit longer. Makes me love films all over again.

Not a story about euthanasia, not at all.

So, who wants to talk about the use of the Trinity in this movie? I’m guessing Eastwood’s a Catholic, or at least the writer of the film is. This is the most medievalish film I’ve seen since Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev! The father-son-holyspirit stuff is going on throughout, just like the dark ages! Eastwood has assembled an icon, an incarnational image of the divine…and the human, the oh-so-human humanity of not being God and being God at the same time. Beautiful, Frightening, Awe-full. Work of high art. Much more rich than Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. Makes me proud of Hollywood. Even the newest Rob Schneider movie can’t shake my faith.

Hey Grant,

Could you expound on that a bit? I saw the movie, but I’m not quite getting what you’re saying.

Thanks,
Matt

It’s just a sense that I got at the beginning of the film that seemed to hold true at the end with Morgan Freeman’s character’s role as the storyteller who tells us who [our] father is. Now I’m not saying that this isn’t a story about three human beings and what particularly happened to them, but if you map the trinity onto the three main characters, Eastwood’s (Father), Swank’s (Son) and Freeman’s (Holy Spirit), you get some interesting things going on. Like I said, Million Dollar Baby is not a mere explanation or allegory of the trinity, but the trinity doctrine seems to be going on throughout.

I think the euthanasia issue, the fact that people say it’s “playing God”, is taken quite literally in the action of the film. At one point, Eastwood’s character responds to the priest by saying, “But she didn’t ask God to do it, she asked me”. That’s the horror and awe of the film, the human being who is asked to take on the attributes of God. Also, think about the name that Eastwood’s character gives Swank’s character, was it “my darling, my blood?” And Eastwood’s character (the father) takes full responsibility for Swank’s (the son), wanting to control her every move, but realizing that she has a will of her own and will kill herself to get her own way.

Ah!

Thanks, Grant. I never thought of it that way.

Honestly, I’m always looking for symbolism and multiple layers of meaning in movies and music and stuff, but an image of Trinity in Million Dollar Baby didn’t even occur to me. It makes a lot of sense, though. Especially the whole playing God part.

Again, I don’t want to play this up too much. I mean, it’s not just a about the trinity. It’s possible that I wouldn’t have even seen the movie this way if I wasn’t reading a history of Christian thought book at the time. It makes me want to watch Eastwood’s other films a little closer. Has anyone seen his “Blood Work”?