"Raging Bull": A Pile of Boring Bull ...

For the last few weeks, I have found time to watch movies that everyone says are so good. In fact, before that I was watching Old "Siskel and Ebert" episodes on YouTube, specifically the times when they talked about the best movies of the year, and their reviews really got me interested in watching all those movies.

Of course, there's a long list of Academy Award winning films out there that have not seen, and now I have the time to check them out!

Some of the Academy Award winners were really not that great. At first, I was reluctant to share my opinion openly. Film critics like Siskel and Ebert are not the final arbiters of anything, although as time passes, I tend to agree more with Gene Siskel than Roger Ebert. Still, I might have more to learn about appreciate good movies that just have a more acquired taste.

When I realized that I could appreciate what some critics shared positively about some of these movies, but still decide that I did not care for them, then I felt comfortable sharing my views fully.

One of the Academy Award winning films where I disagree with major critics and reviewers is Raging Bull. I have been hearing about this movie for a long time, and there are so many rave reviews about Robert DeNiro's performance in this movie. In fact, "Raging Bull" is the last time that DeNiro won an Academy Award for best actor--we are talk about forty-four years ago!

It's a long movie, all in the dark, occluded film noir style. Yes, there is stellar purpose of presenting films in black and white as opposed to color, and directors show insight and merit by muting the ostentatious color display in favor of shades, forms, and movement. Film tells better stories in black and white, causing us to focus on the characters, the movements, the images themselves, rather than getting all caught up in the glamor of color.

However, the black and white veneer does not help Raging Bull. In fact, the film comes off as lifeless, boring, insipid.

I did not like the main character, Jake LaMotta, at all. His boxing career is neither impressive nor interesting. I didn't care about his domestic squabbles, or his wretched treatment of his others, including his own brother and wife. I didn't care about his fallen reputation and fall from glory in his later years, either.

Yes, the cut scenes with LaMotta fighting one boxer after another were pretty compelling, and the slow-motion choreography style really catches the audience's attention the first time. But to see this same kind of fight over and over, with the spinning, the lights, the noise, the same noise and froth of the roaring crowds, it also just turns into empty affectation.

I did not like "Raging Bull." It was like a pile of "bull ...," if you know what I mean.

I cannot remember the last time I watched a movie, and I was looking at the clock, wondering when it was going to be over. I can't stress this enough: this movie was boring!

Sure, it was some hot biopic to critics. Sure, Robert DeNiro really threw himself into the role, even gaining 50 lbs. so he could look like a fat slob.

And ... I did not care.

I started wondering if there was something wrong with me, if I was missing the deeper, more subtle, interesting elements somewhere hidden in the background of this movie. After watching it, I Googled "overrated Raging Bull," and I found this really interesting article:

5 Reasons Why "Raging Bull" is Overrated

I agreed with every one of the reasons, and her assertions resonated with my sense of the flick. I will quote most of the article in bold type, then offer my own reflections on the reason in italics. 

1. The Old Neighborhood Had Plenty of “Jakes”

Yeah, the Bronx was chock full of them. Boxers who were on their way up or down the money ladder ... The world of Raging Bull is novel to those who grew up on a farm in Kansas, but to city dwellers, he was anything but a hero, and nothing new.

A really good point here. There is nothing in this film that really makes Jake LaMotta spectacular or special. Why should I care about some thuggish lout who is really good at hitting people, inside and outside of the ring?

Not One Really Likable Character

I know it’s comparing fiction to reality, but when Rocky goes into the ring, we, along with Adrian are rooting for him Rocky Balboa is the fighter with a heart. All of the characters in Raging Bull are one dimensional, except for perhaps Joe Pesci as Joey, who we can commiserate with as having to put up with having that creep for a brother. 

This is a serious criticism. Other reviewers have pointed out that likability in a character is essential, and that likability can come into play for a character, even if the main character in a story is supposed to be a bad guy.

According to critic and author Eric Edson, there are nine traits which a reader or viewer can attach to a character, and that character needs to have five of them in order to be likeable. The YouTube channel @_Magnify references these traits in Eric Edson's book The Story Solution.

Comparing the nine traits to Jake LaMotta, let's see how well he does:

1.  COURAGE.  For Edison, this trait is non-negotiable. We are not going to find any character likable, let alone interesting, if that character has no courage. When I watched Jake LaMotta’s fights, one after another, in the movie, he didn't appear to work up any kind of courage to step into the ring. His exploits in the ring did not strike me as courageous. All that “ballet dancing” foot-fighting was not rivetting at all.

2.  UNFAIR INJURY.  LaMotta suffers one major "injury": weight gain, and that is all his fault. Nothing to feel compassion for there. For the greater part of the movie, when LaMotta gets hurt, he deserves it, and you are glad he gets hurt.

3.  SKILL.  Sure, he’s a skillful fighter. I would give the Jake LaMotta character that.

4.  FUNNY.  Not one bit of humor in this guy. He doesn’t make us laugh, and there’s nothing in this film that is remotely humorous. Raging Bull is not supposed to be a comedy anyway.

5.  JUST PLAIN NICE.  Nope. Not one bit. This guy beats his wife, his brother, friends, colleagues. He is a jerk. A total louse, lout, and ultimately a has-been loser.

6.  IN DANGER.  We never really sense any danger imposing on him. Even when he opens up his own club, and he ends up getting busted for selling drinks to a minor, we don’t get a sense that he’s really in trouble. It’s just one more sad outcome for a stale athlete.

7.  LOVED BY FRIENDS AND FAMILY.  See above. Nope.

8.  HARD WORKING.  We never see Jake LaMotta as a hard trainer. We never see him overcoming physical challenges to become a better boxer, to be any kind of a winner.

9.  OBSESSED. Yes, he is clearly obsessed with the sport, and his fame, and his ego. That could not be clearer.

Based on this list of assessments, LaMotta has only two "likable" character traits. He does not have a minimum of five likable traits, and that goes for the rest of the characters, too. I didn't care about any of the characters, and I didn't care for them.

The Cinematography was Masterful But Too Much

Yes, Raging Bull contained exquisite shots and as it was filmed in black and white there it looks like a period piece. But too much of a good thing is too much, and all of that slow motion blood spray and bone crunching was over the top. Yeah, we get it–fighting is brutal and violent. The artistry made up for lack of characterization and no real surprises.

I wanted to share the full commentary on this point here. I did NOT think that the cinematography was all that. It was affectation, kind of like a ten-year old showing off his skills, rather than a master craftsman depicting a poignant scene with exquisite skill. Good cinematography should draw people's attention to the story, not to itself.

Overhyped

When Raging Bull first came out, everyone was talking about how Robert De Niro ate his way up to a dangerous body weight to play Jake as an older guy. He was one of the first actors to engage in this type of serious “method” acting. If any other actor would have played Jake, or if Di Nero would have opted for a fat suit, it would not have been such a hit. 

This criticism nails it. Yes, there was hype in 1980 for this movie. This film has outlived that hype, and therefore cannot live up to the hype.

Been Done Before

Marlon Brando already did that “Coulda Been a Contender” movie with On the Waterfront, and 1976 had already given us Rocky. So what if Raging Bull was “true”? Raging Bull is a great movie for what it is, with all the gritty realism and fabulous camera work, but many feel it does not deserve its place in the All-time Best Ever category.

This reference to Marlon Brando is telling, since in the movie, Jake LaMotta literally quotes that line "I could have been a contender" from On the Waterfront. Now there's a movie worth watching! Brando played Terry Malloy, another has-been boxer, but one who has some heart, who has to show some real courage, who takes a stand for what is right and fights against an evil boss. That's a main character whom I really liked! He IS a likable character. I remembered thinking, after I shut off Raging Bull, how much more I preferred On the Waterfront to the overhyped, overrated drivel of Robert DeNiro and his boxing bull ...

You know that things are bad for a movie when its failure as a film reminds you of another film that is so much better.

Final Comment

Raging Bull is not a great movie in my view. It's incidental, unimportant. It disappoints for how great it could have been. There's no real flow or narrative worth following, and there's no sense from the movie--whether the scenes, the characters, or the narrative--that any of this stuff really matters. Now, Martin Scorcese is an excellent director, and I have enjoyed most of his movies. Raging Bull was my chance to watch one of his most critically acclaimed pictures, and I found that it doesn't live up to the acclaim at all. More like Ranging or Meandering Bull, Raging Bull is a hollow picture, with nothing appealing or really compelling about it. Not Oscar material by any stretch.

American Ugly: The Spacey Shame Should Not Surprise Us

Tinseltown is not glittering right now. The whole movie industry was already foundering because of the rapid changes in technology, media, and entertainment. The latest string of flops pouring out of the studios has signaled that Hollywood's malaise is bad, really bad this time, and it does not look as if it will survive this time.

I am really glad about this. The liberal, progressive agenda has thrived on big money from media moguls and movie stars. We had been giving this cultural institution all kinds of money, which they in turn spent against our own better interests as a free people living in a constitutional republic. It's about time that we stopped giving them our money, that we stopped enabling them to bewitch us with their fiction to push their Utopian fantasies on us.

There is no better representative of this epic down fall than Kevin Spacey. This actor would sing, dance, and take on stage and screen in all kinds of acting exploits. He had earned two academy awards--Best Supporting Actor in the Usual Suspects; Best Actor in American Beauty--then became Artistic Director for the Old Vic Theater. He had quite a repertoire.

Then came the allegation from Anthony Rapp, which flowed from the numerous women lining up to single out producer Harvey Weinstein for his repeated and long-term predatory behavior. The actor whom Rapp called out? Kevin Spacey. When and for what? Thirty years ago, when Rapp was a minor, and Kevin Spacey was 26 years. Spacey made a number of unwanted advances toward the boy Rapp, carrying him into Spacey's apartment, then

Spacey issued an immediately press release, apologizing for these acts which he claims that he had never done, but if he had done them, he was probably drunk at the time--oh, and he was bisexual and now decided to come out as a gay man. Yes, Kevin tried to cover up for past pedophilia perversion by coming out of the closet.

The moral swamp of sexual degeneracy is getting worse for Spacey. More actors are coming forward announcing that he had made numerous unwanted advances toward him. Young men who were minors are now recounting more devastating sexual assaults.

The consequences have been swift and telling. Spacey has lost his Netflix miniseries "House of Cards", which has folded up instead of going into its sixth season. The Emmy Awards was going to have a tribute for him, but that has been cancelled. There was even talk about another extravaganza on his behalf at the Academy Awards.

All of that has fallen away.

Speaking of Academy Awards ... should anyone of be surprised that such moral duplicity has come flooding out of Spacey's private life and overwhelmed his public persona? Think about "The Usual Suspects." He played a down-and-out cerebral palsy stooge narrating a crime. The detective mocked him, talked down to him, but suspected him of nothing more than being a big nothing.

Turns out at the end that he was the mastermind for the whole crime, and every aspect of the crime scene he narrated, he had drawn from objects and items in the detective's office. It was a brilliant tour de force for Spacey. He played a con man who conned law enforcement. How long did Spacey get away with his perverse behaviors and mastermind his way toward getting away with it all?

Then there's "American Beauty."

That film should have been called "American Ugly" or "Le Mal Americain", since the French word "mal" best covers sickness and evil at once. The film was sick, and it was evil. The main character, Lester Burnham played by Spacey, is a bored, empty, repressed suburban father. Right away, we see all the brazen, Freudian Marxist stereotypes. Married life is bad, sexual license is good. People should be able to sleep with whomever they want to, and there is nothing wrong with that.

An explicit example of this occurs because Father Burnham is sexually attracted to his daughter Jane's best friend Angela, who in turn is a slattern, at least by the way she talks. In one early scene, the father falls into lust with this young girl. Wake up, people: that young lady is a minor. We have a movie released in 1999 which was already glamorizing an adult sleeping with a minor!

Because of his renewed sense of "love" for this young girl, Lester starts exercising, working out, he quits his old job and gets a new job as a cashier at a fast food place. His wife then dives into another set of dalliances with another realtor, they have an affair .. blah, blah, blah.

Now, at the end of the movie, the young girl Angela ends up lying down for him, but admitting that she has never had sex before. Lester backs away from having sex with her, as though his decision not to sleep with her just simply justifies everything before.

But still, folks, what we saw in "American Beauty" was ultimately American Ugly,  the moral compass of Hollywood clearly spinning out of control, justifying everything contrary to sound moral order for any stable, strong society. A homosexual couple living down the street from the Burnham family were presented in the film as the only real stable, loving "couple". The army veteran with his dispossessed wife and drug-dealing son was a closet homosexual. The father, the breadwinner in the other family was lusting after minors. The film showcased adultery, mockery of natural marriage and family, and then glorifying the natural yet destructive impulses in human beings.

Is this really high class? This is Artistic? Is any element in the film remotely true or in concert with reality? Nope, and in Sadist fashion, this fiction did indeed outline a moral treatise, one of decadence and disdain for what is good in marriage, life, and family.

This one scene encapsulates had warped and twisted Hollywood had become, the "love scene" of an adult with a minor:

What is troubling now is that ONLY NOW do movie goes and Spacey fans look at this scene and comment "this makes my skin crawl." Why didn't it make Hollywood elites and movie house goes sick to their stomachs nearly 20 years ago?!

But hey, the Academy Awards certainly thought this film was a "beauty", and they awarded Spacey the Best Actor Oscar, and the film also won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. "American Beauty" would have entered a privilege class of Academy Award Winners if Annette Benning had won for Best Actress, the film would have been the fourth Big Five movie.

That did not happen, but behold, we saw in this film what would later burst forth in Spacey's real life for everyone to see. He had perversions within him, which had been spilling out for quite some time. The accusations against him had occurred 13 years prior to winning the Best Actor Oscar. Why is anyone surprised, though? The long history of sexual abuse and assault was CELEBRATED on the Academy Award stage in 2000!

Consider some of the most stirring--and now disturbing--remarks from his acceptance speech:

This is the highlight of my day. I hope it is not all downhill from here. 

Yes, it would go downhill from there. Taking over a theater in London, where he would prey on young men and boys.

To my friends, for pointing out my worst qualities. I know you do it because you love me. And that's why I loved playing "Lester," because we got to see all of his worst qualities and we still grew to love him. 

No, we do not grow to like this character. He turns into a selfish man-child who seeks to please himself, ruining his family and undermining himself. No.

This movie to me is all about how any single act from any single person put out of context is damnable. But the joy of this movie is that it is real beauty. We found real beauty in this extraordinary script by Sam Mendes -- by Alan Ball. It feels like he wrote it though, doesn't it?

The only ordinary object which inspired any beauty was a plastic bag swirling around in a dust devil. That was it. The amoral abyss of the characters, the caricature of loving family and legacy was sad.

 And Mother, I don't care what they say about bringing you to award shows. I will always bring you to award shows because I'm proud of you and I love you. And thank you, thank you, thank you.

His mother was his date--even then, people suspected that he was gay. Notice also that Spacey never mentioned his father, who was an abusive Nazi, literally.

Spacey's fall from worldly pre-eminence should not shock anyone, really. If anyone was paying close attention, it all would have been crystal clear. How could anyone look at trash like "American Beauty" and call it award-winning? Hollywood, and the same coven of creeps and greedy moguls enabled and covered up for Spacey's behavior for decades to follow.