Raging Bull
MARTIN SCORSESE, 1980
3.5 STARS OUT OF 5
Jake LaMotta is a subject I don’t think hardly anyone would dare touch today, and Martin Scorsese did it justice back in 1980, for the most part. The combination of prize fighter, someone people would automatically look up to and admire for that position, and abusive, self-centered father and brother, is an incredibly volatile mix. It’s said Scorsese found interest in LaMotta, and the idea you just keep on getting back in the ring with the bullshit in life, after he himself nearly died of a drug overdose. It’s hard to say if he did it out of admiration, self-hate, or both. But whether he kept getting back in the ring or not, Jake LaMotta deserves your contempt, even if you find a shred of understanding for him, which I think comes through loud and clear in Raging Bull.
The intensity in Raging Bull is often dialed up to ten, and it is an brutal watch, even if there is a bit of fascination involved. The boxing scenes themselves do anything but actually glorify the sport of boxing, where the sound effects and jerking of heads and bodies making you feel like you yourself have a concussion after each match. The squirting and dripping of the blood just ratchets up the tension all the more. Two of the most intense scenes I’ve ever seen in film are on the domestic violence side, the first when LaMotta takes an off-handed comment about performing sexual acts on his brother, Joey (Joe Pesci), and beats both Joey and hits his wife, Vikie (Cathy Moriarty), dead on, as if she were in the ring with him. The second is of LaMotta in jail, pounding his fists and head against the concrete wall. It is such a raw and awful self-hate flowing through him that’s palpable. The light and shadows in this scene show a man trapped in the basement of his own consciousness, totally helpless, totally rock bottom. I had to look away a few times during the film, something that rarely ever happens, and I wonder how Scorsese himself could continue to watch DeNiro carry on, though he is astounding in portraying the self-destruction, raw anger, and total self-absorption required for the role. It’s also a great move in the writing department that we learn very little about LaMotta’s past, how he got to be as he is, because with that often comes rationalization of his present actions. Considering what we’re witnessing, no one needs to worry on a sad backstory or daddy issues. If anything, we’re looking at 1964, sad and out of shape LaMotta, and getting the story of how he got there, again without pity.
No matter how awful LaMotta looks, by the end, he seems to be getting a second shot at life, performing a comedy (one-man show?) routine to a crowd. This part bugs me more than a little. It’s one thing to watch him bombing in bars and making an ass out of himself, as his second act in life backfires from the beginning, and serving alcohol to young girls out of his bar puts him behind bars. Yet, the last scene, where he is performing in front of three mirrors - which is wonderfully shot, as we see him looking at himself, parts of his face in each mirror, or at least two (to my recollection), maybe an indication that he cannot be whole, or maybe that he remains self-obsessed and unchanged - indulges LaMotta far too much. For a movie so raw in intensity, so fair to its characters throughout, we could’ve left without this. Then again, it’s based on a book by its subject, which can also be rather troublesome - it did last year’s The Irishman in a little, too - so maybe it’s to be expected that we didn’t finish with LaMotta in jail banging his head against a concrete wall. Overall, this may be the most well-crafted, tonally consistent and compelling of the Scorsese films I’ve seen, though the ending troubles me. No one’s coming out of this thing wanting to be Jake LaMotta, but he’s done too much to earn a closing monologue.
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Postscript:
Getting to the halfway mark of the marathon, and to be frank, I’ve already started rethinking how the marathon itself has begun to impact how I think and feel about some of these films, as well as others I have considered to be good or great. It’s why rating films is such a difficult process for me. I’m forever trying to figure out exactly what I like and don’t like in movies. I can already say I’ve soured on Chinatown and Blue Velvet, primarily because I find their protagonists irritating and that they include more than a little shock value. I think I gave them good ratings because I regarded them highly the first time I saw them, but I’m more dubious now. The initial plan was to revisit ratings at the end, because I’m not all that good at rating films in the first place, though to be honest, there are only 3 or 4 I’d change as of right now. Anyway, I think I’ll finish this off with a “Upon Further Consideration” bit where I consider the body as a whole, where I might have gone wrong, and then start planning follow-ups to watch more films from new directors I’ve discovered.