When I was dissing Eastwood’s Baby, I was speaking out of turn, as I hadn’t seen it, and was playing off summaries and my own sense of his filmmaking to rant. Having since viewed it, I perhaps grudgingly admit its workmanship and persist in my rant about its cheap sentimentalized cliches about disability and remain firmly underwhelmed by aforementioned workmanship. But I wasn’t sure why, or maybe just how to pitch those complaints in a fresh way. I mean, it wasn’t Raging Bull, but it wasn’t trying to be. How do we talk about and critique its scaled-down ambitions, without pulling out masterpieces to beat it over the head?
Here’s how:
Robert Wise’s 1949 The Set-Up is a fantastic grimy boxing noir; Robert Ryan stars as an over-the-hill (at 35! whippersnapper!), down-on-his-luck fighter who doesn’t know that his manager and trainer have accepted a fix for his latest bout. The film is shot with at least as much panache–it plays in real time, it has some wonderful character-introducing tracking shots to open, it revels in the glory of shadows, smoke, and over-lighted rings. It is also a superior example in every other way: this is how to make a boxing movie, that could play as lowlife anthropology, capitalist or spiritual allegory, thrilling fight. I honestly didn’t know how the climactic bout would end–despite the film dotting every generic i and crossing every conventional t. It is suspenseful, funny, and smart. (Scorsese shares the commentary duty [with Wise], and he’s typically breathless and astute about the film’s worth.)
Apparently, for the trivia fans, it’s based on a long narrative poem by the same guy who wrote “The Wild Party” (which came out in a fancy edition with Art Spiegelman drawings) a few years back.
Now, when my students tell me that I need to embrace the quality of Baby‘s storytelling, I can give them a counter-example that really gets it right.
do your students tell you stuff like THAT? i wish i had your students! (in case any of my students is lurking, you guys are great and i love you all).
is it me, or you guys have become a tad apolitical in your old age? or maybe there’s already been a VERY POLITICAL discussion of eastwood’s baby and i’ve missed it, having not been notified of the existence of this blog, let alone invited to write in it.
but what about the veritable spate of movies (two) who got a ton of attention last year for unabashedly promoting euthanasia? this country loves to conduct its political debates through movies, tv, and bumperstickers — which of course promotes subtletly and a nuanced approach — not. i haven’t seen baby, but i’ve seen the sea inside, and i don’t know that i’ve ever seen a worse oscar winner (and god knows there’s plenty of choice!).
Yeah, actually the euthanasia/disability angle was exactly what provoked my anger and a long squabble about the movie. Pretty good discussion, actually. On the right side of the menu, hit the link to “amy” for her posts–her one and only, before dismissing us entirely, was about Baby.
And, yeah, I do have some great students who like to argue with me. I got … oh, three or four long emails about why Eastwood’s film deserved better than my argument. I of course failed those fuckers.
Oops–
Gio, our longer conversation occurred here.