Comments Thread For: Boxing's best biopics: The gritty, understated realism of 'Raging Bull'

[BoxingUpdates]

As the film "The Featherweight," about the life of boxing great Willie Pep, enters wide release, this week a different BoxingScene contributor will reflect on a boxing biopic that resonates with them. Today: "Raging Bull."
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[57Blues]

yea it was a good movie......... point ?

[1Eriugenus]

Unlike all the other films you reviewed, this is a great film. The moral of the story is told to you before it starts 'you can take the man out of the ******, but you can never take the ****** out of the man'. Jake La Motta has grown up on the meanest streets, in the tenement blocks of NY. He has always solved all his problems with his fists. That is what makes him a legend in his own small community, then in boxing, then worldwide. Its probably no surprise he can't stop trying to deal with everything he comes across with his fists.

I remember reading once that, in drama, since the ancient Greeks, the definition of 'tragedy' is that the hero of a story is destroyed by his own character & personality. Any fool, writing, e.g, a soap opera, can give a lead character some horrible event like developing cancer or losing a child in a fire or something, but that isn't a true tragedy. Raging Bull is a true tragedy, just as much as Hamlet or Macbeth, because the personality traits that impel JLM to success also inevitably destroy him.

I could write books about this film. I love it & I keep hearing lines from it 'I am not an animal', 'and though I can fight I'd much rather recite' & 'you never got me down Ray'.

[1Eriugenus]

Now the AI has decided Ghett0 is a swear! This is getting beyond a MoFo joke!

[Left Hook Louie]

Money quote from the article:

Raging Bull is a movie for people who like boxing, yes, but also for people who like movies, who admire the craft of understated storytelling and crisp acting.

Scorsese at the top of his game. Loved the black and white cinematography and everything else about this movie.
Just a great piece of cinematic history.

[Left Hook Louie]

I remember reading once that, in drama, since the ancient Greeks, the definition of 'tragedy' is that the hero of a story is destroyed by his own character & personality. Any fool, writing, e.g, a soap opera, can give a lead character some horrible event like developing cancer or losing a child in a fire or something, but that isn't a true tragedy.

Yes, precisely.
The common misuse of the word is one of my pet peeves. I don't know why but it always irritates me.
An earthquake is not a tragedy, but a personal downfall attributed to the individual's mistakes and flaws is.
It's that simple.

[1Eriugenus]

To me, this is Scorcese close to perfection. The black & white close ups, the slow operatic music, everything.