Follow Your Dreams
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Follow Your Dreams
In Clint Eastwood’s film, Million Dollar Baby, there are many controversial aspects and lessons to be learned within the story’s themes. Eastwood’s film challenges conventions and breaks through the ideological. The main themes in the movie teach valuable life lessons through the main character’s willingness to never give up on her dream. Also, the film goes against the layout of Propp’s narrative functions and what might be the typical sequence of events in a movie. Conflict is essential to a drama movie and Million Dollar Baby fits that genre very well.
There are three main characters that are present throughout the film, who provide as a dynamic trio attempting to break the boundaries in women’s boxing. Maggie Fitzgerald, played by Hilary Swank, is a gutsy woman who is attempting to break into the field of women’s boxing. Her only fault is that she asks the one man who refuses to coach women, to be her trainer. Clint Eastwood’s character, Frankie Dunn, struggles with the lack of a relationship he had with his own daughter and is unwilling to let himself get close to anyone else. However, when Maggie Fitzgerald steps into Dunn’s gym, her motivation to plow through life’s challenges sparks an interest in Dunn. Although Dunn won’t take Maggie on right away, he eventually sees that she has more heart than most of the male boxers he already trains, and agrees to help her. It’s because of Eddie ‘Scrap-Iron’ Dupris, played by Morgan Freeman, that Dunn realizes Maggie’s true talent. Scrap is a retired fighter who works for Dunn and is always watching out for those in the gym who aren’t as tough as the best fighters.
The narrator of the story, Scrap, tells the story in a reminiscent way like he’s talking about the past and reflecting on the sad story of one girl’s broken dream. He plays an important role in helping others by offering them wise advise on his own missed opportunities of the past. He knows what is the right thing to do, but speaks in a way that doesn’t suggest cockiness, but only displays his inner strength. An example of his eagerness to help out others is the way he watches over Danger Barch, a scrawny, inspired boxer with no real talent. Even though Danger gets picked on by all of the other boxers at the gym, Scrap manages to keep an eye on Danger and make sure that no one roughs him up.
The genre of the film is drama / boxing and fits into the typical setting of a boxing film, but still manages to focus on a more dramatic emotional connection between two of the characters. Just like any other boxing or sports film, there is the athlete and the trainer. In this case Frankie Dunn becomes the helper who assists in Maggie’s training to become a competitive, female boxer. To better understand the genre of this film though, it’s better to make an inductive genre analysis, or rather carefully examine the relationships and critical elements in the movie (Vande Berg, Wenner, and Gronbeck 121). Unlike a typical film with a normal sequence of hero verses villain and a happy ending, this film has a complicated storyline that goes against what we expect to happen.
However, the difference in this drama is that the ending is not the typical happy one. Instead of the underdog becoming a champion boxer like Rocky Balboa did in Rocky, Maggie’s hard work and determination ends when she becomes a paraplegic after being cheated in a boxing match. Her life as a boxer is over, and she is left depressed and miserable with her life now being spent in a hospital bed. Not only does she lose grasp of her dream, but also it gets worse when her legs become overgrown with bedsores and she is forced to have them amputated. Of course this provides as a controversial twist to what might have been a perfect ending, but it’s at this point that the movie become a real drama. It’s true that most movies end happily ever after, but for those dramas that are very well done and catch the audience’s eye; there is always something shocking near the end of the film.
A concern when watching this film was that the ending was over done. It was a very unique way to twist the ending by staying away from the stereotypical “happy ending,” but the long and grueling battle Maggie had after being paralyzed may have been too much. Perhaps the dramatic ending and pain that Maggie went through was another way to push the boundaries, but it still was done in a way that keeps the movie believable and not too superficial. Drama movies are meant to be dramatic, so that can explain for the complicated ending that is so depressing.
Another concern with this film’s controversial ending is that Maggie suggests she would rather die than be bed ridden. In some ways this could send out the message that it’s better to be dead than to be a paraplegic, which is not necessarily