It’s Halloween weekend, and I debated watching a scary movie as I try to every Halloween. But I thought about it all week and I just couldn’t find a movie that interested me. I used to LOVE scary movies so I’ve already seen a lot of them, from most the Saw movies to Ju-On: The Grudge, but honestly they all feel kind of cheap me regardless of budget. So I decided to watch a movie about a topic that is truly terrifying: self destruction. As you may have noticed, Raging Bull is featured on my website banner. I first watched this movie last spring after seeing it on many, many best films ever lists. I feel like it’s weird for me to say I like this movie, so I’m just going to say I find it extremely important and interesting, not to mention it’s beauty. I was hesitant to watch it at first because it was black and white, and visuals are one of the most if not the one most important thing in a film for me. But I found this to be one of the most beautifully shot, edited, and scored movies I’ve ever seen. No color needed. Boxing is thought of as an ugly sport but Scorsese turns it into a beautiful sport by way of the classical music during the brutal fight scenes and a camera that seems to dance along with the fighters. I’ve heard people say this is a bad boxing movie and I completely agree. That is, because it’s simply not a boxing movie. The boxing scenes are beautiful as I’ve said (apparently boxing came naturally to De Niro, and he won three actual matches in Brooklyn while prepping for the movie), but it’s not about the boxing. The boxing is merely there to reflect Jake’s (aka the Raging Bull) personal issues and how it affects his profession/passion. Raging Bull is a classic example of a character study (my favorite genre) done in an unorthodox way. We see Jake La Motta as a terrible person right out of the gate. Less than 20 minutes into the film he has already verbally and physically abused his wife, threatened to eat his neighbor’s dog, and sought out a 15 year old girl (yuck). Somehow he still has everything (family, friends, career) but as the film continues and his behavior fails to improve, those things slowly fade away. We see his world crumble around him while he fails to change his ways. Given his pride and stubbornness he doesn’t realize he’s lost everything until it’s much too late. This progression subverts most character studies where the world is static and we see the protagonist turn good/bad/whatever. If you haven’t seen the movie, you may be asking yourself why the Raging Bull’s life crumbles around him and it all comes down to his… rage. As displayed throughout the film, he is incapable of keeping the rage (a combination of built up anger, insecurity, guilt, and envy) within the confines of the boxing ropes. He consistently uses his own brother and wife as punching bags both mentally and physically. He becomes utterly obsessed with the idea that said wife is cheating on him with other men and eventually with his own brother which ends in a brutal, delusion-fueled attack on the both of them. Scorsese amplifies this envy and delusion through lingering, awkward closeups of all her interactions with other men as seen through the eyes of Jake, fixated on her every move. It is this insecurity that ultimately destroys his relationship with her and his brother and inevitably translates to insecurity in the boxing ring and eventually the downfall of his career. La Motta doesn’t seem to experience guilt for the majority of the film, however there are religious symbols in almost every scene to remind La Motta of his sins and contrast his terrible actions. These symbols are particularly present in scenes that include manipulation or violence against his wife. They foreshadow that La Motta will ultimately pay for what he’s done later in life. In La Motta’s final fight against Sugar Ray Robinson, he resigns himself to being brutally beaten, and hangs on the ropes in a way that resembles the crucifix. I’m not going to get into the last 20 minutes of the film which showcases his life after ‘retirement’, but I’ll just say his life definitely didn’t get any better. And it’s not until the last 2 minutes of the film that he finally shows remorse for his actions, and it is purposefully done in an extremely anticlimactic, uninteresting, and insincere way. This most recent re-watch has changed my opinion. I used to say Taxi Driver was the best character study I’d ever seen, but I actually think it may be Raging Bull. I only say this because La Motta as a character basically is the story. However, Taxi Driver feels less a story about Travis and more about mental illness and loneliness itself. Travis is just used as a vessel, or a narrator, to tell a very impersonal story. Raging Bull is a masterpiece of cinema and storytelling, and has climbed its way up to one of my favorite movies of all time.
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May Featured Movie QuoteBarry B. Benson: Yellow-black, yellow-black, yellow-black, yellow-black... Oh, black and yellow. Yeah, let's shake it up a little.
Yeah, I have letterboxd now
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