Raging Bull
No one approaches the angry bull in the pasture, and for good reason. Raging Bull is the adaptation of the autobiography of Jake LaMotta, former World Middleweight Champion of boxing, who retired and went into stand-up comedy and entertaining. He is portrayed by Robert De Niro, who delivers a tour de force performance as the larger-than-life personality, with all of the sordid details and dark corners of a personal life full of paranoia and violence. Superficially a boxing biopic, Raging Bull is an in-depth character study, a period piece of New York in the Forties and Fifties, and arguably the most poignant and personal work by the great Martin Scorsese.
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Raging Bull follows the rise and fall of Jake LaMotta, both personally and his time in the ring, and what his battles have left behind when the audience has gone. From the earliest, Jake's violent temper and obsessive need to prove his manliness--even at the expense of his loved ones--is a curse which haunts him throughout Raging Bull. We might even be inclined to sympathize with Jake when he endures the vicious barbs of his first wife's cajoling at first, but history will repeat itself, and we realize that Jake is the one who has spurred the discomfort and distrust in his own home. Jake's closest friend is his brother, Joey (Joe Pesci), who trains Jake, and exercises the discipline which Jake resists, in the ring and outside of it. Joey is the voice of reason, the conscience of Jake, although Jake rarely listens, with the voices of anxiety and fear pounding in his head. In truth, Jake is unable to cope with the world outside of the ring. Joey introduces Jake to the eye-catching Vickie (Cathy Moriarty). Even though Jake's already married, and Vickie is a mature-looking fifteen year old teenager, he is smitten. Yet even before he's been introduced, Jake has preconceptions about what kind of girl Vickie is based solely by looking at her. He desires her, and yet wants her to be the perfect, pristine ideal he dreams of in a woman, making Jake's deeply rooted "Madonna-whore complex" evident. He desires her sexually, but is unable to consolidate his feelings of arousal when reciprocated. To Jake, the idea that Vickie wants him too means that she can't be pure, and thus must be unfaithful to him. These feelings of distrust forces him to cling to her with an authoritarian grip, demanding exclusive dominion over her and interrogating her whenever she comes home. And all of a sudden, we see how things with his first wife got to where they were when we came in...
But for Jake's inner conflict about Vickie, his relationship with his brother is the heart of the film. Joey is always defending Jake, even to his slimeball mafia associates from the neighborhood--one instance ending in a physical altercation as violent as any of Jake's in the ring. Joey is also Jake's sparring partner, enduring much of Jake's abuse, with padding but still with a temperance and brotherly understanding. But Jake is the kind of person who needs to be broken to know what he was...to have something taken away to understand its value. After a devastating and completely needless altercation between the two, there is a long span of time where the two brothers do not speak, where they are distant strangers. It is heart-crushing, and speaks to the sense that Jake has truly forgotten what it is in life which is best, how he has been blind to seeing the true value of love in his life. This sentiment is reflected in the closing title of Raging Bull, quoting John 9:24-26 from the New Testament: "Once I was blind and now I can see." But Jake's road to reach this revelation is a long one, and it is a bloody road, filled with the scraps and wreckage of his life, his failings, and his mistakes. Jake's rage may be his surge of power in the ring, but in his life, he is forced to confront how he has hurt his loved ones, and ultimately that he isn't a terribly bright guy. By the time he has retired from boxing, and when he finds himself desperate to raise cash quickly, he comes to the tragic conclusion to smash out the gemstones from his long-sought after Championship belt to pawn, rather than sell the decidedly rare belt itself. And though it is bad enough that he is pressed to sell his hard-earned trophy for a pittance, it is even worse that he values it so little that he is ready to damage it in spite of all his suffering he endured to claim it. As Jake's life begins to fall down around him, it becomes clear that Jake never really had a clear idea about what he wanted in life, except maybe to fight.
While the focus of Raging Bull is centered on Jake LaMotta and his life outside of the boxing ring, within the ring is where the film transforms into something raw and intense. Martin Scorsese films most of the powerful boxing matches from within the ring, eliminating the sense of distant safety normally reserved for the audience of this bloodsport. More than witness the savagery of LaMotta and his opponent slugging one another with fists pounding like pistons, blood spraying in large blasts, we are there in the fray, and the adrenaline and fury is real. The fights are visceral and brutal, with the loud cheers of the crowds and the bright lights of flash bulbs going off. These scenes are also punctuation to concurrent events in LaMotta's life, which in turn also speak to his inner state of mind through the metaphor of the fight. These are not just sporting skirmishes in the ring, but the collision of two mythological titans, full of apocalyptic portent. Smoke and heat rises of the mat, as though the gates of Hell itself opened for two demons to wage an unholy war upon one another. The famous rivalry between Jake LaMotta and Sugar Ray Robinson (Johnny Barnes) are like siege engines unleashing volley after volley against one another, each strike of the fist like a battering ram against the other. The final confrontation--coyly called the "Saint Valentine's Day Massacre", due to it occurring on February 14th--is a chilling display of both violence and pride, powerful and devastating, with lighting that is evocative and even poetic, giving the scene a rare--even anachronistic--sense of beauty and terror all at once.
Raging Bull is a work of rare genius and a miracle of production. It's worth noting that Martin Scorsese anticipated that this would be his last film, made shortly after his recovery from a near-fatal drug overdose. The story goes that it was introduced to him by Robert De Niro many years prior, but it was only after his own brush with death and the revelations that follow that Scorsese began to feel not so much the passion for making a "boxing picture", but a kind of sympathy for Jake LaMotta. There is an operatic feel to Raging Bull, not least of all in the beautiful musical score, juxtaposed with the bloody battles of fierce warriors. Raging Bull is a rare film by Scorsese made in black and white, a reflection of Jake's altered perspective of the world. One of the best examples of this comes during a montage showing the years passing by after Jake and Vickie are married, through a series of "home movies". They are filmed in color although treated to look as though worn by time, with snapshots intercut showcasing memorable boxing matches in black and white. The key here is that the world in these nostalgic home movies is warm and colorful...normal; in the ring, everything is clear, sharp, defined. Jake is an excellent boxer because he understands the rules--better than the other boxers, and better than his own life. It is evident that Jake is a champion boxer--he earned it, too--but that he also has terrible social problems. Moments outside of the ring which make up Raging Bull--shot in black and white--represent the moments in his personal life where his mindset is still that of being in the boxing ring, a perception of the world with is not compatible with civilized society. Jake runs afoul with other people because deep down in his subconscious, he still believes he's in a fight, in the ring, playing by black and white rules. And we are forced to see the world from his point of view. Consider his long, furtive stares at people in slow motion, as though his adrenaline were spiking, hearing distant conversations with heightened senses, like a predator preparing to strike. Jake believes himself to be always prowling for some kind of fight, even when he allows himself to put on weight and officially retire; even his stand-up routine turns defensive quick when heckled. If Jake LaMotta appears mad, it is because in his eyes, the world is mad, and only the ring makes sense.
Recommended for: Fans of a surprisingly poignant character study and biopic of a fascinating figure in sports history. The film is a tense yet beautiful, moving drama, which for the first time brings together a trinity of artists--Scorsese, De Niro, and Pesci--who would continue to work on many other films together in the future. It is paradoxically both a gorgeous and brutal film, and one of cinema's most powerful works of raw sincerity.
But for Jake's inner conflict about Vickie, his relationship with his brother is the heart of the film. Joey is always defending Jake, even to his slimeball mafia associates from the neighborhood--one instance ending in a physical altercation as violent as any of Jake's in the ring. Joey is also Jake's sparring partner, enduring much of Jake's abuse, with padding but still with a temperance and brotherly understanding. But Jake is the kind of person who needs to be broken to know what he was...to have something taken away to understand its value. After a devastating and completely needless altercation between the two, there is a long span of time where the two brothers do not speak, where they are distant strangers. It is heart-crushing, and speaks to the sense that Jake has truly forgotten what it is in life which is best, how he has been blind to seeing the true value of love in his life. This sentiment is reflected in the closing title of Raging Bull, quoting John 9:24-26 from the New Testament: "Once I was blind and now I can see." But Jake's road to reach this revelation is a long one, and it is a bloody road, filled with the scraps and wreckage of his life, his failings, and his mistakes. Jake's rage may be his surge of power in the ring, but in his life, he is forced to confront how he has hurt his loved ones, and ultimately that he isn't a terribly bright guy. By the time he has retired from boxing, and when he finds himself desperate to raise cash quickly, he comes to the tragic conclusion to smash out the gemstones from his long-sought after Championship belt to pawn, rather than sell the decidedly rare belt itself. And though it is bad enough that he is pressed to sell his hard-earned trophy for a pittance, it is even worse that he values it so little that he is ready to damage it in spite of all his suffering he endured to claim it. As Jake's life begins to fall down around him, it becomes clear that Jake never really had a clear idea about what he wanted in life, except maybe to fight.
While the focus of Raging Bull is centered on Jake LaMotta and his life outside of the boxing ring, within the ring is where the film transforms into something raw and intense. Martin Scorsese films most of the powerful boxing matches from within the ring, eliminating the sense of distant safety normally reserved for the audience of this bloodsport. More than witness the savagery of LaMotta and his opponent slugging one another with fists pounding like pistons, blood spraying in large blasts, we are there in the fray, and the adrenaline and fury is real. The fights are visceral and brutal, with the loud cheers of the crowds and the bright lights of flash bulbs going off. These scenes are also punctuation to concurrent events in LaMotta's life, which in turn also speak to his inner state of mind through the metaphor of the fight. These are not just sporting skirmishes in the ring, but the collision of two mythological titans, full of apocalyptic portent. Smoke and heat rises of the mat, as though the gates of Hell itself opened for two demons to wage an unholy war upon one another. The famous rivalry between Jake LaMotta and Sugar Ray Robinson (Johnny Barnes) are like siege engines unleashing volley after volley against one another, each strike of the fist like a battering ram against the other. The final confrontation--coyly called the "Saint Valentine's Day Massacre", due to it occurring on February 14th--is a chilling display of both violence and pride, powerful and devastating, with lighting that is evocative and even poetic, giving the scene a rare--even anachronistic--sense of beauty and terror all at once.
Raging Bull is a work of rare genius and a miracle of production. It's worth noting that Martin Scorsese anticipated that this would be his last film, made shortly after his recovery from a near-fatal drug overdose. The story goes that it was introduced to him by Robert De Niro many years prior, but it was only after his own brush with death and the revelations that follow that Scorsese began to feel not so much the passion for making a "boxing picture", but a kind of sympathy for Jake LaMotta. There is an operatic feel to Raging Bull, not least of all in the beautiful musical score, juxtaposed with the bloody battles of fierce warriors. Raging Bull is a rare film by Scorsese made in black and white, a reflection of Jake's altered perspective of the world. One of the best examples of this comes during a montage showing the years passing by after Jake and Vickie are married, through a series of "home movies". They are filmed in color although treated to look as though worn by time, with snapshots intercut showcasing memorable boxing matches in black and white. The key here is that the world in these nostalgic home movies is warm and colorful...normal; in the ring, everything is clear, sharp, defined. Jake is an excellent boxer because he understands the rules--better than the other boxers, and better than his own life. It is evident that Jake is a champion boxer--he earned it, too--but that he also has terrible social problems. Moments outside of the ring which make up Raging Bull--shot in black and white--represent the moments in his personal life where his mindset is still that of being in the boxing ring, a perception of the world with is not compatible with civilized society. Jake runs afoul with other people because deep down in his subconscious, he still believes he's in a fight, in the ring, playing by black and white rules. And we are forced to see the world from his point of view. Consider his long, furtive stares at people in slow motion, as though his adrenaline were spiking, hearing distant conversations with heightened senses, like a predator preparing to strike. Jake believes himself to be always prowling for some kind of fight, even when he allows himself to put on weight and officially retire; even his stand-up routine turns defensive quick when heckled. If Jake LaMotta appears mad, it is because in his eyes, the world is mad, and only the ring makes sense.
Recommended for: Fans of a surprisingly poignant character study and biopic of a fascinating figure in sports history. The film is a tense yet beautiful, moving drama, which for the first time brings together a trinity of artists--Scorsese, De Niro, and Pesci--who would continue to work on many other films together in the future. It is paradoxically both a gorgeous and brutal film, and one of cinema's most powerful works of raw sincerity.