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RAGING BULL - Some Current Thoughts
🕑 Added 2022-12-13 22:05:37 +0000 UTCWatched it again last night. For some reason movies like this really feel better for me when I'm feeling down and very raw emotion-wise. There's something about the honesty here that feels resonant and important to experience. The poetry of that film. It's pure ballet. It's pure cinematic mastery. It's never pretentious, as these kinds of movies so often tend to be. Every beat, every cut, every moment is perfectly timed. And there's something about it, that weirdly does feel tender despite the calloused nature of it, like there's a wounded bird at the core of this entire mechanism, and it's never out of focus.
Raging Bull always sticks out to me as something more from the heart. Less of a grandiose statement. It's less flourishy, it's less adorned. Not one reflective moment of dialogue thick with metaphors...it's all just alive and real and immediate. No excess fat to trim whatsoever. The artistic confidence and instincts here are just so strong. I know Scorsese was at such a low point in his life, self-destructing, and trying to rebuild his life...and I can feel that in the film for sure, more than any other.
For me it's that color sequence of the home movies, that brings tears to my eyes every time. It's such an aching montage of beauty falling through cracks, with time. The key being the inserted fight images slicing through the harmony and music, and creating such bitter wonderful movement to the scene.
If there's one moment in the film initially I found a tad overwrought when I was young, it was the final quote we see at the end of the film. I struggle with opening or closing quotes in movies, as they tend to be a tad on the nose, or redundant in what they are expressing. But when I watch as an adult, I see this quote about the blind man who can suddenly see...and I know it's not really about Jake LaMotta, or really any character in the film. It's more an idea. And the fact that Scorsese dedicates the film to his teacher at the end...for me is what perfectly puts the final stamp on that quote and it's pointed nature here. It's a creative revelation that allows Scorsese to see his own life and his own art with clarity, through his lessons of the past. And this is where we find ourselves.
Comments
Fillmore Pockets
100% agree. Makes me want to rewatch Raging Bull right now.
Wolfman Brandon
That's funny because the last time I watched it was during my darkest period and it certainly didn't help me. It was just too depressing to watch for me in that down of a mood and it didn't resonate with me personally despite being exceptionally well made. Meanwhile, Ordinary People, which beat it for the Best Picture and Best Director Oscar, actually made me feel better despite being arguably just as depressing probably because it hit a lot closer to home for me during that time with its unflinching hardships of losing a close family member. Repeat viewings of it in the years since with a more healthy mind has only grown my adoration for it that I didn't have originally and it's now one of my favorite films. That being said, I'm gonna have to see Raging Bull again someday and see if my feelings on it change.
Bennett Oliver
Admittedly, this is not one of the Scorsese films I revisit that often, mostly because I find De Niro’s La Motta to be so repugnant and hard to watch. But it’s a beautifully done film, where Scorsese’s signature swooping camera, rapid-fire style was coming into fruition with those iconic fight scenes. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but I’ve never forgotten the beatdown La Motta allows himself to suffer at the hands of Sugar Ray (staged like a crucifixion), or the breakdown he has in jail as he furiously pounds at a cement wall while howling, “I’m not an animal!” (Interestingly, The Elephant Man was released the same year and had Merrick say the same thing.) It’s ultimately a story about redemption, with a man who lost everything due to his sickening, volcanic violence (the only way he could ever truly express and purge himself of his macho insecurity and paranoia) finding a kind of peace and inner calm even as he’s living in the shadow of his former life. That was Scorsese’s way in to the material. He had almost died from a cocaine overdose in September 1978 and De Niro came to visit him in the hospital to get him to commit to Raging Bull. Scorsese never really wanted to do it because it was a boxing film and he didn’t relate to sports. But New York New York had just bombed and his life was in the toilet so he had very few options at that time, which led to him saying yes. For the longest time during the making of the film his heart wasn’t in it; he was only directing because De Niro wanted him to. But somewhere along the way he found himself relating to La Motta as he was trying to pick up the pieces of his life after falling from grace. That was what made it personal for Scorsese: the story of a man who lost everything but recovered it spiritually. I don’t remember feeling like La Motta earned his redemption at the time of watching it so long ago, but maybe my view on him and his journey will have softened if I watch it now. But yes, very well-put insight into the film.
RRejino
This is beautiful and beautifully written. Thank you.
Stephen
And unless he’s changed his mind, that’s his favorite film he’s made.
Jackson Littlewood
Unbelievably King of Comedy also only played for about a week
Jackson Littlewood
How do you feel about some of his other films that are often hailed by cinephiles as underrated? Last Temptation of Christ, Bringing Out The Dead, After Hours, etc.
Stephen
Been meaning to rewatch this for awhile and now I definitely am. Also post Taxi Driver/the 80s in general definitely wasnt the greatest time for Scorsese even though he was making interesting stuff like After Hours which apparently only played in theaters for like a week.
Deepfocuslens
Haha yeah...Barry Lyndon one of my all-time favs. Yeah...I will admit it took me time to get into Raging Bull and Goodfellas. But now I'm fully a fan, fully on board. I just can't believe how special they are. When I did my review for Goodfellas, that was when the film really clicked for me.
Jackson Littlewood
Couldn’t have put this any better. That film is such a masterful expression of inevitable pain. It’s been a while since I’ve revisited it but you just made me want to. And I tend to agree with you about quotes at the ends of movies as being a bit too on the nose or redundant. But Raging Bull is definitely an exception for me. My favorite though is probably the one at the end of Barry Lyndon. It really cements not just the film’s themes but it’s impact.
