I didn’t intend for this to happen, but today somehow turned into “Josh catches up with Oscar contenders” day as I dove back into the Lagoon to watch Million Dollar Baby. Maybe I was fatigued, or maybe I just identify more with middle-class nebbishes than with hardscrabble boxers, but this movie never managed to draw me into itself the way that Sideways did.
This is not to say that it’s not a great film. It could have — perhaps should have — been horrible, a steaming pile of boxing-movie cliches and stereotypes with a mawkish, bathetic ending (I won’t spoil it, I’ll only say this: mawk mawk “Ma Cushla” mawk). Million Dollar Baby’s achievement is less in avoiding cliches and more in the way it executes them. Plot points could have plopped down like anvils, but instead they drop like dominoes; events lead into each other predictably and inevitably, and although it never leads to any surprises, its smooth progression has a beauty of its own. Similarly, the acting is wonderful without containing any actual wonder: Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman play parts they’ve honed to perfection over the years (The Man With A Tortured Past and The Saintly Narrator, respectively), and while I haven’t seen any of the other Best Actress nominees, I can say that Hilary Swank deserves her Oscar nomination not only for doing a great acting job, but for avoiding a capital-D-capital-A Dramatic Acting job that the material was totally calling for, but would have had me rolling my eyes.
That’s really all I meant to say about this movie: despite the fact that it’s formulaic and emotionally manipulative, I never rolled my eyes at it.