I Didn't Like Raging Bull...
Grafton,
I haven’t read all the posts but my feelings about Raging Bull is that it’s designed to hit you and amaze you at such a visceral level that if it fails to wow you after your first viewing chances are you’ll feel the same after watching it again. Don’t feel bad. I love Raging Bull and was blown away by when I first saw it before attending film school and I’m still amazed by it to this day but I do have friends whose opinions I respect very much who find the film to be overrated and not deserving the title as a modern American classic.
What can you do? I feel that way about 8 1/2 and other later Fellini films (from Juilet of the Spirits – to onward)… I know and can appreciate their status as classics but I find myself bored and really fully connecting with them.
I apologize if this was asked before but have you watched any other Scorsese films and liked or disliked them?
there is no debate here.
Vincent,
I haven’t seen many Scorsese films. But I have seen Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Aviator, and I love all three of them. They are three of my favorite movies.
It’s okay to hate or not care for a “classic”.
I thought Benjamin Buttons was a Forrest Gump re-hash!
and Gone with the Wind is a straight up POS!
Wow that felt good
All of these replies make me wonder about the film and how i reacted to it. I saw Raging Bull for the first time yesterday and have had it on my mind all night and day, I thought it was beautifully done and that the writing was great, such natural dialogue. And the musical score. I don’t know. I feel that if I watched it again right now it would pull me in even deeper. I wouldn’t think that a biopic about a boxer, of all people, would have seemed to completely good to me, but it was, and is.
I don’t like brussel sprouts…
Mudflapp, yes, it’s EXTREMELY liberating to say, “You don’t have to like Classic X just because it’s been canonized.” That’s often the role I find myself playing on this forum when I feel like opinions might be getting a bit too complacent — and it’s not a role. People get locked into certain films, sometimes for the wrong reasons. But Benjamin Button and even Gone with the Wind (a much maligned classic that deserves closer attention) are easy targets, and Raging Bull doesn’t belong in that category.
I think the sheer lack of redemption is one of the most crucial and grown-up and uncompromising things about Raging Bull — very few films have the balls to look at someone like LaMotta and say, “He doesn’t get his heartwarming day in the sun. He doesn’t get that halcyon day at the end of the rainstorm. He’s going to die exactly as he lived.” That’s a profound, sobering, heart-shocking realization.
What I said before about LaMotta being partially right in his jealousy is that for him a wife is a wife, and she’s off limits to other men. It’s a very catholic thing, this idea of “sins in the mind” being as bad as sins of the flesh. Seeing a man smile at his wife means to LaMotta, “He’s going to go home and think about her while he’s beating off.” And the thing is, he may be right about that! But to live in human society rather than animal society you can’t go marking people like they’re territory, and you have to swallow the fact that our social institutions (such as marriage and the family) are built on verbal contracts which mean only as much as they say — and which are as flimsy and rippable as paper. Being a man of not-words, of the opposite of words, vows of any kind mean nada to LaMotta. He’s a tragic figure because he sees through some of the hypocrisy of society, but he’s ultimately too dumb, rageful, and self destructive to channel those insights into anything but the urge to bruise, maim and kill.
It’s as if — how can I put this? — Attilla the Hun and Sigmund Freud are the figures on LaMotta’s shoulders, but he has only the most intuitive and therefore inadequate, unhealthy grasp of Freud (who he’s never heard of anyway much less read), so Atttilla the Hun always wins.
The other side of that is that he’s not just lashing out, he’s using the world around him—especially the ring—to punish himself.
Yes, Matt, exactly! Great frames.
If you don´t like it, you don´t like it. I didn´t like ´Breathless´ by Godard, or thought Citizen Kane was that great. You don´t have to confort to the cinematic opinions of the mayority, and your taste may diverge from many but it´s your taste.
For each, it´s own.
So don´t feel bad.
I love how if you post the frames, they look like a Life magazine spread. :)
Yeah, by the way, the top three are frames from the film, the bottom three are photos from one of the Lamotta-Robinson fights. Nobody took a beating like Jake Lamotta.
I had no idea, I took a quick look and thought they were from the film. lol
>>Gone with the Wind (a much maligned classic that deserves closer attention)<<
It’s a Chick Flick on steroids …
Gad, I loathe it.
You didn’t like “Raging Bull”? Then do us all a favor and TAKE THE GAS PIPE!!!!!!
Grafton
Drew, I agree with you. I don’t feel that I have to like the main character to understand him or her or to appreciate him or her. I liked De Niro’s portrayal of La Motta because I found him to be self-destructing and out-of-control.
And I must interject concerning the nature of rewatching films: I can slightly understand how Bobby Wise feels. The majority of advice I’ve gotten from this thread is to rewatch Raging Bull. And I will. But there are a ton of movies I have in line to watch first. Perhaps those movies will affect the experience I will have with watching Raging Bull a second time.
“I think about that a lot. It fills me with great joy to know that there will always be more movies to watch, more books to read, more paintings to see…”
I love that, Jason. The feeling that there is so much more to read and observe and take part in is a great feeling.
And Fredo, I can stare at a Dali or Max Ernst painting for two hours (approximately…) and discuss it in analytical detail. That’s the beauty of art.