cbsreview: MILLION DOLLAR BABY

I could have been connecting the dots Saturday, trying to find the mystery form by putting together dot "a" to dot "z", waiting, lingering, living to see the dust cleared up unto the final dot that, alas, did not actually connect but stayed underneath the main form in the shape of a hook. It can't be any clearer, the final form when all dots connected. It was a question mark.

Connecting the dots begun at Barnes & Noble cafe, 3:00 pm, while I waited for the 4:30pm screening of this Clint Eastwood movie. There at the cafe I took the only table available.

I was enjoying my coffee in that lull when I noticed a book left on a chair across from me. I took it, a collection of essays critiquing Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.

A long tme ago I read an excerpt from this novel in some anthology of postmodlit. I did not understand the excerpt, no excuse there, and I could not even picture out where it's headed for. My belief then was that in the hallucinatory world of postmodernism, Pynchon was deliberately narrowing down his readership to a select clique converging way above the average.

The essays told me, reminded me, that TCOL49 is about one woman's quest for truth, community and significance, and it pictures out her drive to challenge the myth of a male-dominated society. One essay mentions of a NY Times' review of the book, agreeing as to how Pynchon writes about the way humans have become things and revealing a reverence for the human penetration of the thingness of America.

I stood up with the desire to pull out a copy of that Pynchon book from its shelf downstairs to give it (or is it myself?) a second try and a second home, only to realize it was five minutes to screening time. I walked briskly towards the theatre and with the windmills in my mind I lost all mental connections to the book.

----ooo000ooo----

Million Dollar Baby has three actors playing three characters representing the three types of men: Eastwood is Frank Dunn, boxing coach and gym owner, pessimist; Hillary Swank is Maggie Fitzgerald, waitress, boxing-champ wannabe, optimist; and Morgan Freeman is Eddie Dupris, ex-boxer and gym manager, realist.

The plot is simple: Fitzgerald walks into Dunn's and Dupris' lives as a walk-in member of their gym, begging for Dunn to teach her how to box and consequently be a boxing champ. But Dunn is, as it initially appears, also a chauvinist. His credentials are only for men; worse, he believes that Fitzgerald's presence at the gym lowers his stock. He wants her out of there, too.

And of course we knew what comes next. The good guy Dupris convinces Dunn to give Fitzgerald one shot, boxing being just that, one shot, and everything calls for it; Fitzgerald is pretty persistent, Dunn's main ward went to another manager, and of course the film has to go on.

Fitzgerald transforms from an awkward beginner to a believably great boxer right before our eyes, and the moment we spent painstakingly with her, in that grimy gym under uncomfortable conditions (everyone but her is male, see) makes it easy for us to root for her in all her fights. In short, by the magic of cinema, we were her trainers, too, or Dunn's second, or her towel boy, or aide, or just a mere spectator in that gym that slowly but very surely gives form to a training camp of a champion.

Million Dollar Baby is not really a movie about boxing, even though it teaches us, non-boxing fans, some finer points in boxing: the wisdom of shifting weights, the physics in pursuing momentum through the turning of the toe, and as would often come out of Dupris' mouth, he being the narrator (all knowing, therefore, realist?) "Everything in boxing is backwards".

The correct thing to say is that Million Dollar Baby is really a movie about faith.

Dunn has no faith. He doubts Fitzgeral's ability, despite her past performances, and his faith in God is questionable, even though he attends Mass everyday (ironical because he reads WB Yeats, a very optimistic poet, and writes his daughter frequently - even if she sends his unread letters back as frequently). Fitzgerald is all faith. She has faith in his coach, in herself, even in her family who only uses her to attain things material. As for Dupris? Well, his faith is, how should I say it, seemingly metaphysical. His voice, excellent for a narrator, is honest (if there ever was one, an honest voice) and like the essence of somebody more powerful than us, we can't seem to follow where the honesty of his voice leads us.

Have you ever been asked, What are your weaknesses? Or, do you like yourself? Or, why are you intending to work for us? - all seemingly simple but essentially complex questions? This movie is like that and for a reason. It is a detective story that works in reverse. The more facts being presented to you, the more you do not know. (For in reality, this life is a detective story working in reverse, everyday we are just presented with things that we do not understand, more dots that we have a hard time connecting, or even if we do, only present us with another, bigger problem.) Yet the movie, and this life, tells us what we need. Faith.

In her WBA championship fight, something happens to Fitzgerald, and the last quarter of the film revolves around that. Like in the beginning, like in the middle, when she tries to connect the dots toward the championship which supposedly is the final dot, her very purpose, her very faith, carries the theme of the movie. It is a quest by a woman in a sports dominated by men, a quest by a woman for a meaning and significance in her relationship with her materialistic family (who, in themselves, represent the Thingness in America).

Million Dollar Baby's ending presents us with a question. Why?

It is a great movie and I have connected the dots.

Everything has to do with faith, baby.