Raging Bull. 1980. The seventh film.
Raging Bull is probably the best known of Scorsese’s films, and considered by many to be the best he’s ever made. I’m going to hold off on that judgement until I finish this project but this is an enthralling, powerful film that leaves you with a strange and confusing mixture of disgust and heartbreak for Jake LaMotta, the boxer whose life is not only chronicled but in some ways defined by this film.
LaMotta is a successful middleweight boxer, a powerful man whose body is honed to destroy the bodies of others. He lives his life according to his power. He is described as a “bull” for his relentlessness in the ring, but he applies the same tactics to his personal life. Almost every word out of his mouth is a command or a threat. He talks about killing his friends and girlfriends with the natural, casual cadence of a man saying hello to his mother. He has bullied his little brother Joey into being his manager and coach, without much of a life independent of his big brother. When he tires of his wife who hates and challenges him, she is quickly replaced by 15-year-old Vicki, an impossibly beautiful blonde from the neighborhood who used to be Joey’s girlfriend but quickly gets pulled into LaMotta’s powerful orbit. As thuggish as he is, Scorsese does not portray LaMotta as a man without charm. Still, every scene in which he behaves tenderly towards a friend or lover is charged with a fearful energy. Behind his every kind gesture, there is a threat implied. And we are constantly reminded that the threat is never an empty one.
It’s easy to hate LaMotta for his brutishness. Even he has no difficulty acknowledging that he has done a lot of bad things. There’s so self-denial in him. But doing bad things gets him what he wants, so why shouldn’t he? If Vicki comments that another boxer his handsome, LaMotta can’t let it go until he is able to face the rival in the ring and mercilessly destroy his face. No matter how badly he treats her, she never leaves him- how could she? We feel his power whenever he is in the same room as her. He could destroy her, but he doesn’t, so she stays and bears his children.
His singleminded posessiveness drives him to ruin his relationship with the one person who might truly care about him- his little brother Joey, who is always on his side, and has in fact dedicated his life to support his brother’s. LaMotta becomes obsessed with the idea that his brother has “fucked his wife”. This is one of the most famous scenes in the film, and often quoted as a shouted threat, but De Niro plays it much more subtly and more beautifully than that. He speaks the phrase “Did you fuck my wife” in a soft and quiet voice. He doesn’t need to shout or get angry. We know the minute the words leave his mouth what’s coming next.
It doesn’t take long for LaMotta to become convinced that he is right, no matter what anyone says. Once he is “sure” that his brother has fucked his wife, he marches straight to his brother’s home and savagely beats him in front of his brother’s own wife and children. It’s his reaction to everything, and its worked for him so far. His body is a weapon, a tool of violence, and its who he is and how he interacts with the world- even with the people he claims to love. And although his wife doesn’t have the strength to leave him, despite the fact that he hit her so hard that he blackened a fifth of her face, his brother cuts him out of his life completely. LaMotta, completely unversed to complexities of this nature, doesn’t have the ability to reconcile.
We may wonder how a man could be like this, but when we see him in his element, fighting, we come to the conclusion that there is simply no other way for him to be. In the ring, we can almost appreciate what he does. He keeps his body honed like any other tool, pouring ice water over himself to dull it to pain and arousal, savagely watching his diet to retain the perfect weight. No matter how often his face gets battered he doesn’t really seem to be hurt, and he always keeps moving. The way the boxing scenes are filmed, the matches almost seem like artistry. LaMotta is perfectly in his element, dancing around the ring and flowing into his opponents like a force of nature. In the climactic boxing match with his rival Sugar Ray Robinson, he stays standing even though his head is being destroyed. Although his eyes and gums are swollen past recognition and his blood has left dark stains on the ropes, he joyfully exclaims, “Ray, you never knocked me down”. It’s almost as though this is what he wanted, and finds real joy and release in being proudly decimated while still standing. During a low point in his life, LaMotta’s friend sees that he’s unhappy and exclaims “It’s a free country- just don’t fight!” At that moment, it’s like he’s telling a tree not to grow.
But of course a boxer can’t fight forever, and we enter the much shorter second half of the movie, LaMotta’s retirement years. The famous “gimmick” of the film is De Niro’s method acting feat, gaining 60 pounds to play the older LaMotta. But of course it’s more than a gimmick- without boxing, LaMotta’s body has fallen apart. Having seen how his power influenced every aspect of his life, we now see that his lack of power has physically transformed his body into something almost unrecognizable. He can no longer control others and his wife, finally, leaves him and takes his children with her. He buys a club in order to retain some semblance of control and dominance, but he finds himself open to mockery and abuse, and that he can no longer get away with all the things he used to. He is forced to sell his championship belt for bail money. In the most heartbreaking scene, he has a chance meeting with his brother in the street, who looks older and, if not quite defeated, quieter and smaller. Joe’s life has passed LaMotta by completely, and he is a different man than the one he knew before. He chases him down and tries to force him into a hug, kissing his face over and over and begging his brother to kiss him back. Joe refuses and, saying barely a word, drives swiftly away and leaves his big brother calling after him in the street.
His strength got him everything, but without it he is nothing, reduced to pantomiming punches in the mirror and beating his own head against the wall. In the final scene he recites, in a lifeless voice, the famous Brando monologue from On The Waterfront. “It was you, Charley… you was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit,” he deadpans, speaking to his reflection in the mirror. Brando had one thing LaMotta doesn’t: someone to blame other than himself.
It’s hard not to feel heartbroken for LaMotta’s life, and hard not to hate him for the cruelty that caused it. In the end, I was left just wondering what value you can attribute to a man who has been destroyed by whatever means, by himself or others or act of God. Raging Bull shows us the fierce realities of a cruel man’s life and lets us find whatever value we can.
Though beautifully filmed at every moment, the filmmaking became an invisible part of the force of the story. There were many scenes that jumped out at me, like the way Sugar Ray seemed to become a part of the smoke in which he was ensconced in the climactic scene, or the way De Niro’s lithe body is framed when he meets Vicki face to face for the first time, clinging to to the chain link fence that separates them like he could sweep a hand and tear it down. It’s the performance of De Niro’s lifetime, and perhaps Joe Pesci’s as well. I don’t know yet if Raging Bull is the best film Scorsese has made, but I know that it’s one of the best movies I have ever seen.
Next: King of Comedy
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