The flaw in Million Dollar Baby is the ubiquity of Morgan Freeman's character. Mr. Eastwood could have picked another narrator from which we absorb the bonding between the central characters. Freeman was powerfully cast in Gone Baby Gone, but "Scrap" waters down an otherwise powerful dramatic arc in Clint's seminal work, and Baby is the kind of film which challenges preconceptions, the kind of film that speaks for itself about human will and dignity that serves admirably without the silly political gamesmanship that diminishes the actor's stature, the last of its kind from the old studio system Clint knew how to milk, merging almost perfectly the anti-federal mandate agenda with the tragedy of defeated aspiration. GBG is a weaker, more diluted film, but I bookend it with Baby because both have the ingredients of what could be great films about the tanglewood between our physical frailty, aggregate lack of value coupled with our extraordinary accident of evolution.
This is as far as I can go this morning. For those of you who read "On the P & Q," the woman is hired but will not last very long. She made the exact grimace of economic necessity envisioned by my overwhelmed stress. Frontline will not receive Vatican sanction, but I bless them. "The Suicide Plan" is exactly the kind of exposure of the American underbelly that matters to me, (and this underbelly is what Affleck wades into with a scorch playing the minute detective) I have criticized PBS for its documentary voyeurism on dying, but in this segment, the video journalists stuck to the story; no doubt did some of us a service.
I have found my inner terrorist. I'd recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment