#19: Raging Bull

Raging Bull (Scorcese, 1980)

I have no idea what to say about this one. I really don't have much to add, except some commentary on biography films in general.

I think biopics should be viewed as if you're viewing fiction, because really they are fiction. They're based on real people and real events, but they're not about those real people. They're about the filmmakers' interpretations of those events. The filmmaker decides what's important about a person, and what parts of his life are the most interesting. The filmmaker also decides what themes to focus on. Some films based on history are wildly inaccurate. If anyone's ever seen A Beautiful Mind and read the book, you can tell the difference. They cut out huge parts of John Nash's character, huge parts of his life, and made stuff up because they wanted to make the audience like the main character more. The John Nash of the book wasn't a loveable jerk. He sexually assaulted some of his male roommmates. A Beautiful Mind is an extreme example, but even the ones that are mostly accurate present the characters the way they choose. But, many are still very good films that tell very good stories. If you get hung up on the historical inaccuracies, you're missing the point of the film. That's why biopics should be viewed as if you're viewing a fictional story. Stories based on made up events are no more fictional than stories based on real events.

Raging Bull seems to be a pretty historically accurate, as far as I know, but Scorcese chooses to focus on the part of his character driven by self-hatred, always trying to prove he's better than everyone. The turning point of La Motta's career, in the film, is when he agreed to take a dive in a fight. But, too prideful to fall down, he just let his opoonent beat him up without falling down, making it obvious that he was taking a dive. At that point he lost his self respect, and started taking his anger out on everybody and accusing them of cheating on him or plotting against him whenever he perceived any kind of slight toward him. To Scorcese, this is the essence of Jake La Motta. This is probably not the essence of the real Jake La Motta, but it's the essence of one person's perception of him, and if you view the film that way, it's a very well written and well acted, if a bit too drawn out film.

Rating: **** / 5

76/101

Next: La Strada, The General

It seems The General and Battleship Potemkin are streaming on Netflix. So the only one I don't really feel like watching that I'll have to put on my Netflix queue is Wizard of Oz. Maybe I can use that as an excuse to try the Pink Floyd thing.

Others:

Days of Heaven **** / 5

I'd give this a 9/10 if I were rating on that scale, but on the scale I'm using for this game, giving more than four stars means it's one of my top 100 films of all time, so it only gets four stars.

I won't say much about it, other than it's a really good film, with really strong character development and very good presentation style.