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Million Dollar Baby Subhash K Jha
Movie
Million Dollar Baby
Director
Clint Eastwood
Cast
Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman

Subhash K Jha


So fine. Clint Eastwood has chalked up another wildly winning drama. But Million Dollar Baby, I’m sorry to say, lacks the easygoing fluent and febrile dramatic tensions of Eastwood’s last film Mystic River.

If the earlier film was tragic and mystic, this one is much too conscious of the director’s awesome reputation as a creator who must repeatedly deliver award-winning directorial performances.

Nothing, except the last 20 minutes of this vaguely satisfying film takes us by surprise, not Eastwood’s gravelly machismo, not Swank’s gritty and glorious effort to rise above layer after layer of prejudice to get into the ring and wallop those punchy looks and fists that ring loud and clear in the critical spheres.

At first when Maggie saunters into Frankie’s training centre, we know the two are going to spar over words of throwaway wisdom.

Sample: “Someone’s gotta tell you, you’re too old to be a boxer…you aren’t gonna cry now, are you?”

Swank is, of course, too brutally pragmatic to cry. If you’ve seen her cross-dressing triumph in Men Don’t Cry you’ll know Swank is as sincere as an actor gets.

This film follows suit. It’s got sincerity written in every frame. But very rarely does the material (selfsconsciously ‘brilliantly’ written by Paul Haggis) cross the zone of artistic exhibitionism to touch the innards of integrity.

But yes, Eastwood touches the correct chords in almost every sequence. The verbal and emotional sparring between the two protagonist is low-pitched, almost lyrical. Though the film is truly a showcase for Swank’s sparing virtuosity, Eastwood’s wizened wit and irony often furnish the dark proceedings with a feisty underbelly that would otherwise have been off-limits for this grim film about the struggle for selfassertion.

Scenes with Maggie’s callous mother and family could’ve avoided being so brutally convenient to the protagoists’ purpose of shared isolation.

The closing interlude when Maggie, wounded beyond repair is liberated from the burden of life by her guru, is gloriously cinematic in treatment. You cherish the moments between Eastwood and Swank, and in fact look forward to more of their comptability than we actually see.

In fact one of the plot’s blind spots is the meager space allotted to developing the central relationship. Swank and Eastwood lend a behind-the-scenes layering to their parts. And then there’s Morgan Freeman, playing Eastwood’s partner and opponent in the boxing arena. As usual he just blends into the dark fabric of this finely though selfconsciously spun yarn of spunk and mortality.

The film has just three main characters. This gives the narrative a cut-and-dried straight-from-the-hip feeling.

You can’t help falling in love with this film. But you can’t but miss the signposts put in the narrative to win your approval.