M
Million Dollar Baby falls a few dollars short
Eastwood’s minor masterpiece succumbs to pressure from Hollywood, writes JOSH BOARDMAN

Million Dollar Baby falls a few dollars short
Eastwood’s minor masterpiece succumbs to pressure from Hollywood, writes JOSH BOARDMAN

illion Dollar Baby is a great movie. From its intense cinematography to its masterful direction by Clint Eastwood, it’s little wonder that this film snatched up four Academy Awards. With superb performances from the three leads, Eastwood himself, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, (Frank, Maggie and Scrap respectively) the piece is underpinned by an exploration into the value of human life.
Is Toole’s heartfelt human examination successfully translated to the big screen?

Is Toole’s heartfelt human examination successfully translated to the big screen?

Yet Eastwood’s flick exhibits a trait prevalent in many blockbusters; the need to insert fairytale and exaggerated make-believe features. Many stories such as the eminent parable of Cinderella begin as simple narratives but are elevated to the mythical through their incorporation of characters such as the Fairy Godmother and fabricated scenes like the transformation of a pumpkin into a golden carriage. Million Dollar Baby could be included in this category.
The movie draws not only from F.X. Toole’s short story of the same name but from a second of his narratives, Frozen Water, from which he integrates the film’s omniscient narrator, Scrap. Eastwood additionally tacks on scenes, presumably for the purpose of creating greater emotional impact.
Thus, this movie falls short where many movies fall short; with their insistence on adding superfluous Hollywood elements to an otherwise brilliant human narrative.
Essentially, the film tracks the journey of a kid from misery lane, in this case a youthful female boxer called Maggie, as she treads an all-too familiar path in this archetypal ‘climb to the top’ tale. Along the way she faces the typical challenges of a lone woman in an all-male world.
Only in the startling twist towards the end, and the committed performance of the ensemble, does this production redeem itself and lift the enterprise from the elementary.
In both book and film, Maggie is sympathetically portrayed. However, Eastwood deliberately manipulates the audience to identify with Maggie’s plight. He takes this sympathy to extremes in his successful attempt to evoke a strong emotional response.
It’s not hard to see why Eastwood wants to influence our feelings – it is a frequent method employed by moviemakers to engage audiences - but the unapologetically blunt methods that he uses somewhat subvert the emotive impact of the original narrative.
Equally, Eastwood includes invented scenes not sourced from either story. He renders Maggie’s impoverished circumstances to such a strong degree that in one scene she is reduced to combing her place of employment for scraps to get by. She is shown – through a series of quick panning shots – to take the remainders of a meal from one of the tables she waits on. Eastwood then cuts to Maggie’s flat where lights are noticeably absent from all but her dining table. The young boxer hungrily consumes the stolen food. Maggie is prepared to do whatever it takes to get to where she wants to go.
This scene is representative of the whole production’s approach to its source material. Toole takes forty pages to tell his story. Maggie and Frank become close by page seven. Eastwood on the other
Drama
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Rated M, 137 minutes

Drama
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Rated M, 137 minutes

hand, spins out the whole yarn to an undoubtedly compelling finish.
This scene is representative of the whole production’s approach to its source material. Toole takes forty pages to tell his story. Maggie and Frank become close by page seven. Eastwood on the other hand, spins out the whole yarn to an undoubtedly compelling finish.
But the raw emotions whirling around a reader’s head after finishing the book are absent here, replaced by a lingering sense of disappointment at the director’s need to ham up the sympathy factor. In doing so, the director compromises the honest emotion inherent in every page of the book.
Another scene close to the climax of the movie is a further sign of Eastwood’s embellishment of Toole’s text. This extract involves a splicing with the story, Frozen Water.
In the original text, Scrap and Danger (Jay Baruchel) don’t appear at all, but their development is a significant subplot of the movie. Whilst Danger, a trainee at Frank’s gym, is something of an imbecilic hillbilly, Scrap shines as the story’s narrator and a focal point for the narrative.
However, the complete improbability of the scene in which Scrap intervenes on Danger’s behalf against a stereotypic bully undermines Scrap’s believability as a character. Aside from the questionable importance of its inclusion in the overarching narrative, the intrinsic implausibility of a 60-something, half-blind, retired boxer winning a fight against a fit young man leaves this viewer sighing in disbelief.
Perhaps Eastwood considered his film too somber for the average audience member. Perhaps the scene with Scrap and the bully was injected into the final feature solely for the bone crunching emotional satisfaction. Whatever the reasoning, it certainly achieves this, while adding little to the overall narrative. Once again, Eastwood relies upon tried and tested Hollywood techniques to sustain his production. For a fleshed out human examination, we must refer to Toole’s parable.
The final showcasing of Eastwood’s Hollywoodesque manipulation involves the almost cartoonishly evil portrayal of Maggie’s family. Yet again, the director exaggerates components of Toole’s text. When Maggie’s mum – in a scene noticeable for its surprising indulgence of light as opposed to the rest of the movie’s dull colour palette – is offered a new house to replace her ramshackle trailer, this atrocious excuse for a mother openly mocks her alienated daughter’s success in the boxing arena instead of opting for a more appropriate cry of appreciation.
In the original text the mother’s response to Maggie’s gift has her wondering “how’ll {she}’ll get welfare and food stamps” as she is unable to get a job due to a late night movie addiction. Predictably, Eastwood once more takes Toole’s illustration of a character a step too far; placing their behavior in the realm of incredulity in juxtaposition to Toole’s compelling representations.
Although it is possible that Maggie could have as pitiable an existence as she leads in the production – she is dirt poor, her family is worse than Cinderella’s adopted mother, she faces competition in a fierce male dominated discipline and her daddy died at a young age – Eastwood’s depiction of her is hardly faithful to the character in Toole’s text.
And yet, despite all of these inconsistencies, the movie still managed to engage this viewer’s attention and sympathy. Despite Eastwood’s departure from the raw honesty of the book, the flaws of his flick aren’t evident until it is inspected through an analytical lens.
Regardless of its abundance of clichés, stereotypes and stumbling Hollywood stick-ons, Million Dollar Baby somehow retains a sense of soiled splendour. Highly recommended.