Million Dollar Baby

I knew "Million Dollar Baby" had a fine cast - Eastwood, Swank, and Freeman, but somehow I had missed the fact that this was a film at least as heavy as "Unforgiven." Ten minutes into the first reel, I elbowed my friend and gasped in a whisper, "this is a good movie."

Like Unforgiven, the two old pards face something through the catalysis of the young ambitious one - the Scofield Kid and Maggie Fitzgerald. Facing the ghosts of their own youths and business unfinished, they each become the changer and the changed.

And Eastwood does not disappoint in "Million Dollar Baby" any more than he did in "Unforgiven." Making a right-angle-turn, like the film "It's a Beautiful Life," there is a moment the director dashes us against a wooden stool and ends our hopes for a feel-good-movie-of-the-summer. It becomes a film for all times and all seasons. We witness the fighter who now lays among the living dead. Whereas a zombie has a body and no mind, Maggie has a mind, but not body. I do not know which frightens me more.

Having worked in orthopedics, given the poetic license needed for a film, it delivers on the deterioration a healthy body undergoes when there is a C3/C4 cervical insult. I could almost smell that room - and then there is the power of the fighter. Freeman says early on something about her character that sets us up for the turn of the plot.

To make a fighter you gotta strip them down to bare wood: you can't just tell 'em to forget everything you know if you gotta make 'em forget even their bones... make 'em so tired they only listen to you, only hear your voice, only do what you say and nothing else... show 'em how to keep their balance and take it away from the other guy... how to generate momentum off their right toe and how to flex your knees when you fire a jab... how to fly back and up so that the other guy doesn't want to come after you. Then you gotta show 'em all over again. Over and over and over... till they think they're born that way . . .

All fighters are pig-headed some way or another: some part of them always thinks they know better than you about something. Truth is: even if they're wrong, even if that one thing is going to be the ruin of them, if you can beat that last bad out of them... they ain't fighters at all.

This is a good movie.

During the theater viewing - I was toward the front - four different people (along with companions) stormed out of the theater. How many behind did the same, I don't know, but the theater was still packed when the film was over.

I tried to tell a friend about the incredible experience I had had and how I was lucky enough to still catch the film while it was still on the big screen. Maybe he would consider catching it and to my surprise, though I spoke in a quiet voice, I was shouted down. How dare I suggest a woman could fight in this special way - the way of prize fighters?

I sat in stunned silence. He had already stormed out of the theater, like those other four, without ever showing up. I wonder how many walked out of Unforgiven at similar moments?

Clint Eastwood, the angle of death - The High Plains Drifter; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; Unforgiven; Million Dollar Baby - comes. In "Whose Life Is It Anyway," Richard Dreyfuss is in similar circumstances in an era when courts still held power and rather than biting his tongue off, he used it to argue that life support should be disconnected. Such a concept! How far we have slipped.

The two sides - the patients who wants life support withdrawn - and the "establishment" who wants the main character to live out his life "as given" - square off; and the judge who presides at the hearing says, sadly and with sincere irony, no matter what the outcome, he is a "hanging judge." Hang 'em High.

The ultimate cut-man, Eastwood clinically administers the next step. The fighter begs that the trainer throw in the towel. Freeman's character lost his eye and Swanks was about to lose her soul.

And yet, the story is about love. I could not get the 1940's song about the "Million Dollar Baby" out of my mind, each time I saw the titles and maybe there was a reason, if only my own reason.

And so we come full circle to "Revenge of the Sith." What Anakin cannot do, Eastwood's character does, and that is to face death. Different movies and genres, yet juxtaposed. Anakin is willing to kill others to save his soul mate's body, while Eastwood takes his soul mate's life to give her peace. Anakin is ready to slaughter many rather than face death of the one - a short step from himself, while Eastwood is ready to help the one he loves. Anakin is willing to prompt his ends at all costs to others; Eastwood, at all costs to himself.

Did I see anyone storm out of "Revenge of the Sith?" No.

The Dark Side cannot accept mortality and it is why they inflict their views on others, even as they take life in the name of life.

Yoda and the Eastwood character deeply regret death, but as Freedman's character reminds us, it comes to all - but at least is some cases someone "got the shot." Or, "I coulda been a contender."

Million Dollar Baby is about opportunity and love and redemption and storming out of the theater does not change the fact that some of us will lose. But we asked for the shot.

As women, can we ask for any less?

Schofield Kid: I guess I'd rather be blind and ragged than dead.

Munny: You don't have to worry, Kid. I ain't gonna kill you. You're the only friend I got. Here, take this money and give my half and Ned's half to my kids. Tell 'em if I ain't back in a week, they give half to Sally Two Trees. You keep the rest. You can get them spectacles now.

Maggie: You never signed those papers like you were supposed to because you were worried about losing your welfare. I can still sell that house right out from under you. And if you show your fat, lazy hillbilly ass around here, that's just what I'll do.

It was a lucky April shower
It was the most convenient door
I found a million dollar baby
In a five an' ten cent store!

The rain continued for an' hour
I hung around for three or four
Around a million dollar baby
In a five an' ten cent store!

She was sellin' china
an' when she made those eyes
I kept buyin' china
until the crowd got wise!

Incidentally . . .

If you should run into a shower
just step inside my cottage door
an' meet the million dollar baby
from a five an' ten cent store!

If you should run into a shower
just step inside my cottage door
an' meet the million dollar baby
the lady that I adore
she's the million dollar baby
from the five . . .
the five an' ten cent store!