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Million Dollar Baby

© James C. Hess

"Million Dollar Baby" is narrated by Morgan Freeman, who almost perfected the voice-over narrative in "The Shawshank Redemption": His voice is flat and even, factual and determined. He makes no effort to engage prejudice or bias. He tells it like it is and leaves the viewer to draw conclusions: He talks about how Maggie came into Frankie's gym, and wouldn't leave. He tells of how Frankie finally agreed to train her, and what happened next.

But there is more to this narrative: When Scrap is alone on-screen we get to experience his life, as well, bringing another dimension to the overall story that causes it to resonate into our respective lives.

In researching this film I find I have not, previously, said anything of Hilary Swank. There is reason for why this is: Hers is a talent that catches you in unguarded moments and holds you for ever: She not only plays Maggie, she is Maggie. Try as you may to imagine another actor in this role, doing so honestly, and no one comes to mind. Watch Swank as Maggie in scene after scene and it seems she is experiencing each moment for the first time, without benefit of rehearsal. For example, the scene when she and Scrap are seated at a lunch counter, and Scrap tells how he lost the sight in one eye, and how Frankie shoulders the blame for this. Maggie offers nothing as response. Stillness is her, and stillness is what contains what she becomes: A woman determined to make something of her life.

There are other scenes like this, but I leave you to discover them.

In your discovery I invite you to make serious consideration of the cinematography, of how the light and shadows are used to pace and set the conversations that transpire. It is as if the light and shadows not only support the conversations but go to add a dimension to them: These characters do not live in the dark or the light, but between them, and in doing so find their respective ways to one or the other.

Paul Haggis, who has done much of his work in television, earns an Oscar nomination with for his screenplay adaptation from "Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner", a book by Jerry Boyd, a fight manager who penned the effort under the name 'F.X. Toole'. The book is a bare-knuckle effort. Haggis' screenplay is a bare-bones work, giving only what is needed to gain interest, offering only what is needed to welcome one into the story at hand.