“Give me a stage where this bull can be wild and even though I can fight, I’d rather rattle.” A show is sold in the first bars, but what is behind the scenes is impotence, it is toxicity, it is not knowing how to escape the consequences of decisions and being haunted by shadows. There is no room for colors, except in a few small home recordings that sell a beautiful past that, in the best of cases, was ephemeral.
Curiously, those colors do not appear in the images that are produced on a ring. There is the show that is sold, a bull that goes towards the color red with impetus, even if sometimes he does not know why. Every punch, every hook. A brief space for the liberation of the dark part of oneself. Boxing has its elegant side, but in ‘Raging Bull’ it’s physical punishment to calm the mind.
beaten for life
One of Martin Scorsese’s unquestionable masterpieces has returned to theaters in the highest definition possible, giving us one of the best sports and biographical movies of all time. The rise and fall of Jake la Motta offers a lot, both for its screenwriter Paul Schrader and for an imperial and overwhelming Robert De Niro. And everything can be enjoyed both in theaters and streaming through Filmin.
La Motta is one of the aspirants to be boxing champion in the middleweight category during the 40’s. His brother and manager Joey (a wonderful Joe Pesci) tries to appease his paranoid and violent spirits in the domestic environment so that the focus on the ring, but it’s not always easy. Especially when his own family tries to bring him closer to the local mafia to get an easier rise to the top through rigging.
La Motta doesn’t want to know anything about them, but he can’t cut himself off completely either, and that martyrs him. Plus, he makes him paranoid, pitting him against his newest young wife (a gorgeous Cathy Moriarty). Scorsese and Schrader establish biblical connections here, presenting us with a dark and violent Jesus Christ who is equally tempted, although he can’t help but see everyone around him as a Judas. He is not entirely wrong, there is his conniving brother.
‘Raging Bull’: kissing the canvas
Scorsese had no interest in boxing or La Motta in particular, but De Niro continually prodded him. Schrader’s script, which returns to explore another of those complicated and tortured men in his existence, gives him wings to do. a complex and interesting character drama, which has the liveliness of one of his independent projects rather than a studio film. And that’s not to mention the force with which he rolls the fights, a display as sober as animal where the liquids take off and the blows represent a lot.
Here we find several of the best moments of his cinema, including that last fight against Sugar Ray Robinson where our protagonist can only see his own shadow dominating him, or that superb final monologue where he tries to connect his story with that of ‘the law of silence‘. It is possible that he would have had the category if he had not succumbed and if he had had a brother who really helped him, but in the end it is also his own insecurity and his volatility that mark their destiny.
In Espinof | The best boxing movies of all time