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| One man fights alone in a room full of people |
When I was watching Raging Bull, I was questioning why people would call this movie one of the all time greatest movies of all time and I held the same thought until after I finished it. That was when the whole message of the film sank in and I realized why it IS one of the greats. Heck, currently its my favorite movie simply because I related so much to its message and its main character.
Raging Bull is essentially a biopic about the real life Jake LaMotta, a boxer who doesn't fight for sport or fun but to release his rage. After leaving his first wife for a much younger girl, Jake continues his brutal fighting tendencies and as time goes on he grows more and more paranoid about the loyalty of his wife, Vicki, and his own brother Joey, suspecting that they are having an affair with each other behind his back. It culminates in Jake brutally beating up his brother and knocking down his wife Vicki. The rest of the movie explores Jakes life as it spirals more and more out of control.
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| The fights in Raging Bull are unlike any boxing fights ever seen, highlighting Jakes rage. |
With all respect to him as frankly I don't have any business prying into his personal life, Scorsese was having a very difficult time with his personal life, dabbling in drugs and all which lead to the collapse of his second marriage. After almost dying of a drug overdose, he finally agreed to do Raging Bull with the initial thought of making it as his 'farewell' to cinema. Fortunately, Bull wasn't his last movie and Jake LaMottas story was what eventually saved his life.
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| On the set of Raging Bull: Robert DeNiro as Jake, right, Martin Scorsese (with beard) and the real Jake (with white shirt and trousers). |
Instead of being a character who inspires people to never give up like Rocky Balboa or someone whom we admire for their values and moral character like Superman, Jake is a morally repugnant hypocrite who only cares about himself; we don't learn from him because he does great things, we learn from his mistakes. But despite all his flaws, despite being such an unlikable prick, I never found Jake to be annoying; I never said to myself "Look, this Jake character is too unlikable for me to care. Screw him and screw this movie". I cared for Jake, I cared about his wife Vicki, I cared about his brother Joey. Why did an unlikable character like Jake hit me so much?
One reason could be that Jakes plight, one that he brought upon himself, hit me personally. Unlike Scorsese or Jake I never did drugs or fought people to release my rage but I admit that before I practiced kendo, before I watched this movie I always had a type of depression, a feeling of intense loneliness brought about by my own anti-social tendencies. After Raging Bull and seeing so many other people around me being so socially awkward and keeping to themselves, never initiating a conversation with me and showing me general un-interest, I thought to myself screw it, if people won't socialize I'd better do the socializing myself; I recognized the anti-social patterns in my own life, the bitterness that paranoia and hatred brings and how bitter, sad and angry it made me. I wanted to avoid being another Jake and just enjoy life for what it is.
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| Jake comes in to beat up his brother Joey for 'having an affair' with his wife |
Of course, Jake rejects all this help and fixes upon his mind the idea that the world is out to get him. In the scene where he is arrested for (unknowingly) allowing a 14 year old at his bar (a business he found after he quit his boxing job, gaining a lot of weight in the process) and put into a jail cell, Jake contemplates where he all went wrong. It is at this moment that he thinks about all that he's done, about all the people he's alienated and how he is all alone in the world; he denies that he is a monster despite his problems being all his own fault. Even when he tries reconciling with his own brother there is a subtle element in the scene that indicates that Jake isn't really sorry for what he did. He wants to reconcile with his brother but he isn't wholly sincere in his apology.
In the end, even though he does come to terms with the fact that he was solely responsible, he's still ostracized from his family. In a more optimistic movie, we'd have had a scene of Jake and Vicki making up and kissing, with both brothers sharing hugs after Jakes goes down on his knees in pleading apology; maybe we would have gotten a scene of him trying to get back into boxing. But this is Raging Bull and that wasn't what happened to the real Jake.
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| Once I was blind but now I can see. Raging Bull ends with Jake having learnt something but all alone. |
Trivia:
- Sponges soaked in red liquid were inserted into the boxing gloves to give the impression that the fighters were drawing blood as they fought.
- Joe Pesci didn't know his character was going to get beat up so when Jake does beat Joey up, the scene for the actor came completely out of nowhere, making Joeys struggling against Jake a more believable.
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