The emotion in Maggie's voice and her hard-working attitude says it all: boxing is all she has. The audience immediately has an emotional response because of the way this line is delivered. Her family's lifestyle does not appeal to the audience, and when she says she feels good boxing, the viewer will root for her to continue with what she likes. This puts the viewer in the boxer's shoes, and the audience is able to understand the protagonist's dilemma. Leger Grindon states in his book Knockout! "The reason for and purpose of suffering arise as questions central to the genre. Ideally, strong emotions spark a recognition that links the conflicts animating the work to the viewer’s experience." Maggie is suffering because she wants to improve but Frankie will not give her the chance. The audience feels frustrated because she has, as what Grindon explains, strong emotions. This hits a cord with the audience, and we end up wanting to see her succeed. The acting in this scene is great, because one second we feel sorry for Maggie, and once Frankie agrees to train her, the viewer feels the same joy as Maggie because we understand what boxing means to her. I believe this film is interesting because we have never seen a relationship like Frankie and Maggie's in our previous films. In this film, the boxer has to emotionally reveal what boxing is: a purpose. Boxing usually doesn't mean that much to the boxer, for it's usually about money or fame, and yet Maggie's driving force was the fact that it is "the only thing [she] felt good doing." It answers the simple questions like "Why get hit in the face?" or "What's the point of that violence?". In this movie, the answer to that question is plain and simple: it's the boxer's passion.
That is something I immediately caught onto while watching this film, because it is intriguing that she doesn't have any aggression. We can suppose that viewer once again is put into the boxer's shoes, and the love of boxing is so strong that there can't be any negative-emotion towards the opponent. She truly didn't care if she risked it all, because she was doing what she loved. In the essay "Representation of Personal Identity In Clint Eastwood Films", Ana Morais says "In Million Dollar Baby, saving a death is almost more important than saving a life. By giving her death, Frankie shows Maggie his love’s courage and strength just the same. He gave her life by ascribing it true meaning, and for the same reason Maggie tells Frankie she needs him to take her life before she stops hearing the applause from all of those who proved she had made her dream of being a boxer come true. It truly reveals to the audience how boxing impacted her life. Frankie helped her live out her dreams, and helped her accomplish something that truly meant something to her. The viewers might not understand why she chose a dangerous sport when the outcome could end tragically, but that's what makes this film special. Her love of boxing is something we are not meant to understand because we don't share that same passion. It makes the audience wish that they could be that passionate about something one day.
This is important because Frankie in a way represents original boxing films. In the classic boxing films, we never see something this tragic happen to the protagonist boxer. As observed by Leger Grindon, "Even Clint Eastwood had trouble finding a studio to back Million Dollar Baby, owing to fear of “serious pictures” (Bart 2005, 4). Anger and suffering are among the most troubling subjects portrayed in the boxing film. This film shows suffering in a way where they make the audience embrace it, because in the end the boxer got what she wanted, to be something great. This line is one of the last spoken between Scrap and Frankie, and I think it perfectly sums up the idea of this films. This movie ultimately shows the true aspects of boxing because no matter what happens, boxing is more than just a sport. When someone is passionate enough about the sport, they are able to risk it all because they "got their shot". This is something we haven't necessarily seen in our previous films, and that's why Million Dollar Baby is essential in revealing the benefits of boxing.
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Author(savannah hink) |