posted by Scene -- @ 12:06 PM

Frankie Dunn vs. Dirty Harry: Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby”

Walking into Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, it was hard to shake the shadow of Karyn Kusama’s previous efficient and pleasurable film about female pugilism, Girlfight. I had visions in my head of Michelle Rodriguez (who, as Diana Guzman, aggressively charmed and lit the screen with fire-filled eyes as she never would again), bobbing-and-weaving, jabbing Hilary Swank into the corner of the ring, whispering, “come on whitey, girls don’t cry”.

For, as if it were a bag of popcorn, we all carry a bag of personal politics into the theatre when we go to read a film. With Million Dollar Baby, I had, one: assumed that since it was a film about women in boxing that it was also a feminist tract, and, two: assumed that it would be a retread of Girlfight except this time with white people.

In typical fashion when one assumes they know everything about something — I was wrong on both accounts. Million Dollar Baby concerns itself with white class instead of race, and with the Hollywood myth of the alpha male instead of with feminist politics. Indeed, unlike that of Girlfight, Million Dollar Baby’s plot revolves more around the man (Frankie Dunn/Clint Eastwood) rather than the girl (Maggie Fitzgerald/Hilary Swank), and with his struggle against the burden of patriarchal responsibility rather than her struggle against white/male societal restrictions.

Maggie Fitzgerald is our Rocky. She shows up at Frankie Dunn’s gym without announcement, discovered wailing away at a punching bag in the corner, somehow already drenched in sweat. “Just workin’ the bag, Boss”, she says to Frankie, attempting to endear him into becoming her trainer. “I don’t train girls, I’m not your boss, and that bag is working you”, he responds, with the concise, pragmatic dialogue that screenwriter Paul Haggis uses throughout the film like a series of stiff jabs.

At first we are led down the road most likely traveled as the film convinces us that Frankie just won’t train girls. But this conceit is slowly shed as we realize that Frankie, after a series of failed mentorships, is merely afraid to once again become responsible for another person’s dreams. Hanging on Frankie’s mind, like the shadows cast upon the gym’s interior during night scenes, are his estranged daughter, as well as his previous star fighter, Eddie Dupris/Morgan Freeman, who lost an eye during his first title match and now works for Frankie wiping floors and cleaning spit, and his last star fighter, Big Willie Little/Mike Colter, whom Frankie refused to give a title shot to, and who then left for a big-time manager and subsequent championship glory, sans Frankie. Hovering over all of this is Frankie’s sense of Christian guilt. He goes to church everyday and bothers his priest with debates over God’s existence. He is searching for redemption, and yet, does not believe in the concept.

Instead of reasons so blatantly macho as “gurls-cain’t-fight” sexism, Frankie refuses to train Maggie because he looks into her wide-eyed optimism and sees not a girl but rather his past and future failures. Conveniently, though, Maggie happens to be a girl and Frankie is able to use this, as well as his image as an old-fashioned curmudgeon, to reject her as a student and prevent himself from failing once again and bringing yet another fresh-face down with him. Eddie Dupris, however, the film’s narrator, moral center, and all-purpose Wise Mystical Black Man, is able to convince Frankie otherwise.

Maggie is a natural fighter, absorbing all of Frankie’s lessons to the point we see her practicing footwork while she waits tables at a diner, shuffling her feet as her hands write down an order. Her training scenes are typical; we see her clumsily attempt a new training method, and then Eastwood’s montage reveals her amazing progress over a short period of time and monk-ish dedication. Like Diana Guzman, Maggie’s forte is staggering punching power and steely determination, her weaknesses a lack a finesse and footwork and an overabundance of stupid zeal.

Maggie wins fast—fast meaning both early in her career and early in her fights. She knocks out girl after girl in the first round of each fight, building a premature and impressive undefeated streak. Eastwood baits us with Rocky-formula, building on our expectations of genre with montage after montage—next fight, knock out, next fight, knock out...next fight. We figure it is only a matter of time before the titular million-dollar bout where Maggie earns the name given to her movie.

It is when we reach that point in the narrative that the film pulls the chair out from under us. Or rather, fails to—with devastating results. The championship never arrives, and both Maggie and Frankie become broken shells of the great people they almost were.

Eastwood is a fascinating filmmaker because he is aware of his own persona. As an actor he was Dirty Harry, emblematic of the American antihero: tough, independent, rugged, no-nonsense no-bullshit getting-the-job-done-alone Real Man. As a director, Eastwood has been making an auteur run of taking that image and flipping it, providing us with films that are at once Hollywood formula and, perhaps not always successful, somewhat subversive explorations of said formula.

In Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood, through Frankie, shows the American Hero at his most impotent, his most afraid, and well past his prime. He is old and weathered and unsure of himself. He is a lone wolf not by choice, but because he has been rejected by his family. His one friend in life is a constant one-eyed reflection of his own failures. He is rugged and tough but only because he is wounded. It is as if Eastwood were looking back on his own career as an actor/icon, and, if not apologizing for it, at least atoning for it. Not quite reversing hyper-masculinity but imbuing it finally with some truth and psychological depth.

In this pursuit, Million Dollar Baby is mostly successful. Eastwood is aided not only by the able script and the wonderful actors, but also by his own face as it works as a signifier. If cinema is primarily a visual medium (and it is), then the sheer visual sight of Eastwood’s leathered face—so linked with star persona and past roles of boot-strapped gun-slingin’ cowboy masculinity—as it winces, sags, stares on helplessly, bites its upper lip and wheezes as it talks, is enough to shake Hollywood paradigms of The Male. While other auteurs may cast themselves in their own movies for reasons of vanity, ego, or as a gesture of no-faith in actors, it seems to me that Eastwood casts himself because it is a viable and effective artistic statement.

Unfortunately, the film’s attempts at other forms of commentary are not as successful. As stated, Morgan Freeman, as Eddie Durpris, is once again relegated to the role of Wise Black Man/Best Friend. And while he is given a character arc of his own, one that proves entertaining and rewarding, once his story is wrapped up he returns to narrating Frankie’s story as if his own didn’t matter at all and never did.

Worse than this is Maggie’s class story. Eddie relates to us how Maggie only knew one thing in her life: “that she was trash”—white trailer-trash, to be exact. But instead of having Maggie struggle to live down the image and aura of her upbringing, and the economical disadvantage she was born into, the film presents trailer-trash as Trash, as a fact plain and simple, and has Maggie trying to separate herself totally from those “hillbillies” (her words). Her family, especially, is frightening in their ignorance, selfishness, and tackiness. The film missteps by presenting Maggie’s relatives, not as a bad family, but as just a typical example of poor white people. They are scheming and devious. They are ugly and like theme parks. They slurp slushies while wearing greasy hats. Their conversation is much slurred talk of welfare and prison and neighborhood gossip. They are mean. And if this sounds humorous, it is not; the film presents this all as downright scary.

Girlfight took its politics as far as it could, to the point of being ludicrous. Its commentary on women in a men’s world were betrayed when Diana Guzman fought her boyfriend in a boxing match, for the sheer impossibility of such a narrative turn. Mixed-gender boxing is not an issue of equality, but an issue of safety regulations. Lightweights will never fight heavyweights either, and that has nothing to do with the fact that lightweights are weaker fighters than heavyweights. (But I digress.)

Million Dollar Baby, on the other hand, takes the opposite route and backs away from its politics in service of narrative entertainment. While Eastwood accomplishes a lot, he also squanders other opportunities, much like a boxer taking a few hits or holding a few punches in order to make a fight more entertaining. Curious enough, because that is the exact same advice that Frankie gives to Maggie in her boxing matches. He says if you don’t let them win a little, then they won’t even let you fight. In the end, Hollywood formula wins out, but only because Eastwood lets it.

Jef.Catapang