RAGING BULL - Some Current Thoughts

Watched 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.