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You could say that Raging Bull is a boxing film and you would be right. Yet categorizing this film as just that, would be an insult to the drama of Jake LaMotta’s life that is retold in Raging Bull. In essence, Raging Bull is a character study of an insecure man. In fact, LaMotta is so insecure about himself, his sexuality and what others think of him, that he constantly feels the need to prove to everyone that he is a real man; a force to be reckoned with. Let me ask you this: why do kids fight? They mostly don’t fight because they want to hurt each other per se, but rather to make a point: “I’m the boss around here!”
Jake LaMotta had everything a young man could dream of. With every fight, he was seemingly unstoppably inching closer to the coveted World Title. He was married to a beautiful woman. His family loved him; his brother Joey stood by him through thick and thin. It seems like the best a young kid from the Bronx could hope for. And yet, throughout the film, we never see Jake be truly happy. Sure, he will occasionally laugh or smile, but there is always this underlying uneasiness when he interacts with other people. It’s as if he’s afraid that they are judging him. So, Jake acts like a child that has to make it clear to everyone who’s boss. And LaMotta does not spare anyone from his violent outbursts: he hits his wife, his brother and the few friends he has. I believe that he doesn’t do this to hurt them, but rather to keep them close to him: Stay with me and love me, or else… In reality, Jake isn’t only fighting his opponents in the ring, he is also fighting his own demons and unlike most of his opponents, these he cannot overcome. Because LaMotta is so afraid that the people close to him will leave him or betray him, he resorts to the one argument that always tips the scale into his advantage: violence.
This is also where LaMotta’s fights in the ring can be interpreted on a meta-level. You can look at them in a twofold way. Firstly, they serve as an outlet for LaMotta’s violent nature. In the ring, he can beat up guys all he wants and he does a splendid job at it. Vicky once made a remark that she found a certain boxer to be quite pretty. Later, LaMotta has to fight this man. He gave the kid a hellacious beating. In slow motion, we see the blood gushing from his face. We literally see his nose break from one of Jake’s power punches. The Bronx Bull shows us how he earned his nickname and we hear one of the ringside commentators say: “he ain’t pretty no more.” This was exactly LaMotta’s intention and Scorsese inserts a meaningful close-up of Vicky’s face. She got the message all too well.
Secondly, juxtaposed to the punishment LaMotta dishes out to his opponents, he isn’t scared of taking a punch either. It seems that in the ring, Jake penances for his sins by absorbing terrible punishment at the hands of Sugar Ray Robinson. It is a well-known fact in boxing that LaMotta’s chin was the stuff of legends. His defense remains underrated throughout history, but that doesn’t take away the fact that he was able to shake off punches that would’ve laid out just about any other man. As Scorsese once named the ring “an allegory for life”, it seems as if he and his screenwriter Paul Schrader wanted to make it look like Jake’s ability to absorb huge punches like a sponge isn’t just a case of toughness, but also a means of being punished for his sins. It’s like he’s saying in the ring: “I know what I do is wrong on some level, but I just can’t express it so I’ll do my penance in the ring.”
What Scorsese realized on a visual level, especially the fight scenes, in Raging Bull is – for lack of a better word – achingly beautiful. Before Raging Bull, boxing matches were pretty much always filmed from outside the ring. Scorsese not only brings the camera into the ring, but turns LaMotta’s fights into a sort of ballet through the use of slow-motion and Thelma Schoonmaker’s grand editing. Just watch the scene where we see the steam raise from Jake’s body. He really does look like a Raging Bull. Time and time again, in slow-mo, we see the punches make contact with his opponent’s body. The blood and sweat flies all over the place. During the final boxing scene of the film, we see a ray of blood splatter the people sitting on the first row. Subsequently, Scorsese slowly moves his camera upward, from Jake’s feet to his face. His entire body – even his legs – is covered in blood, his eye is swollen shut. There is no air of glamour attached to the sweet science in Raging Bull. It’s man against man in there. I have never seen the physical aspect of boxing, the pain and bloodshed that is an essential part of the sport, reproduced in such a realistic and believable manner as it was in Raging Bull. Michael Mann made a decent effort with Ali, where he managed to give the viewer a good sense of the intensity of the sport of boxing, but the film lacked the poetic beauty of Michael Chapman’s black-and-white cinematography.
The team that was responsible for the realization of Taxi Driver is largely the same for Raging Bull. Naturally, there are the usual suspects: Scorsese directing, Schrader writing the screenplay and DeNiro acting. But there’s another man that deserves special praise: Michael Chapman, the director of photography. He did an extraordinary job in Raging Bull and I’m not just talking about the virtuoso boxing scenes. My favourite scene of the entire film comes near the end. Jake LaMotta is arrested in Florida for intercourse with a minor. We see LaMotta in his cell, a single ray of light on him. As a result, LaMotta is a mere silhouette, a shell of the fighter he once was. He is pounding his hands and head to the wall while lamenting: “stupid, stupid, stupid…” Once again, LaMotta punishes himself for his acts. And I think the minimalist photography adds a lot to the emotional impact of that scene.
I’ve not yet gotten around to speaking about the performances. DeNiro, who portrays Jake LaMotta, actually came up with the idea of making the biopic. He became infatuated with LaMotta’s life after having read the man’s autobiography. As soon as Scorsese and Schrader came aboard, the project went into production and DeNiro immersed himself in the persona of The Bronx Bull. He met extensively with the man himself, his brother Joey and even his ex-wife Vicki. I’ve read that DeNiro even trained boxing with LaMotta and trainer Al Silvani, so as to make the fights look more realistic.
However, it is not DeNiro’s acting when in the ring that makes his performance so memorable. It’s his ability to communicate LaMotta’s mental issues. Like I said, there’s always this undercurrent of fear of being left or betrayed running through Jake’s head. The fact that DeNiro is able to effectively communicate this in a genuine way is a testament to his terrific acting skills. To this day, some of the scenes deeply unsettle me. When Jake starts beating his brother, convinced that he had a relationship with Vicki, I just cringe. This is the Robert DeNiro that I’ll remember, not the man making a clown of himself in Analyze This or Meet the Parents.
The other standout role is that of Joe Pesci as Jake’s brother Joey. He is as loyal a brother as he can be, training Jake, making him watch out for his weight and keeping the mafia at bay as best he can. It’s heartbreaking to see him get almost nothing in return from Jake, except distrust and a beating. You can think of Pesci what you want, but at his best, he is one of the finest actors I’ve seen on the screen.
Raging Bull not only captured LaMotta’s pugilist expertise, but also his violent, mentally uncertain persona, beautifully elucidating his success and adversity both inside and outside of the ring.
You could say that Raging Bull is a boxing film and you would be right. Yet categorizing this film as just that, would be an insult to the drama of Jake LaMotta’s life that is retold in Raging Bull. In essence, Raging Bull is a character study of an insecure man. In fact, LaMotta is so insecure about himself, his sexuality and what others think of him, that he constantly feels the need to prove to everyone that he is a real man; a force to be reckoned with. Let me ask you this: why do kids fight? They mostly don’t fight because they want to hurt each other per se, but rather to make a point: “I’m the boss around here!”
Jake LaMotta had everything a young man could dream of. With every fight, he was seemingly unstoppably inching closer to the coveted World Title. He was married to a beautiful woman. His family loved him; his brother Joey stood by him through thick and thin. It seems like the best a young kid from the Bronx could hope for. And yet, throughout the film, we never see Jake be truly happy. Sure, he will occasionally laugh or smile, but there is always this underlying uneasiness when he interacts with other people. It’s as if he’s afraid that they are judging him. So, Jake acts like a child that has to make it clear to everyone who’s boss. And LaMotta does not spare anyone from his violent outbursts: he hits his wife, his brother and the few friends he has. I believe that he doesn’t do this to hurt them, but rather to keep them close to him: Stay with me and love me, or else… In reality, Jake isn’t only fighting his opponents in the ring, he is also fighting his own demons and unlike most of his opponents, these he cannot overcome. Because LaMotta is so afraid that the people close to him will leave him or betray him, he resorts to the one argument that always tips the scale into his advantage: violence.
This is also where LaMotta’s fights in the ring can be interpreted on a meta-level. You can look at them in a twofold way. Firstly, they serve as an outlet for LaMotta’s violent nature. In the ring, he can beat up guys all he wants and he does a splendid job at it. Vicky once made a remark that she found a certain boxer to be quite pretty. Later, LaMotta has to fight this man. He gave the kid a hellacious beating. In slow motion, we see the blood gushing from his face. We literally see his nose break from one of Jake’s power punches. The Bronx Bull shows us how he earned his nickname and we hear one of the ringside commentators say: “he ain’t pretty no more.” This was exactly LaMotta’s intention and Scorsese inserts a meaningful close-up of Vicky’s face. She got the message all too well.
Secondly, juxtaposed to the punishment LaMotta dishes out to his opponents, he isn’t scared of taking a punch either. It seems that in the ring, Jake penances for his sins by absorbing terrible punishment at the hands of Sugar Ray Robinson. It is a well-known fact in boxing that LaMotta’s chin was the stuff of legends. His defense remains underrated throughout history, but that doesn’t take away the fact that he was able to shake off punches that would’ve laid out just about any other man. As Scorsese once named the ring “an allegory for life”, it seems as if he and his screenwriter Paul Schrader wanted to make it look like Jake’s ability to absorb huge punches like a sponge isn’t just a case of toughness, but also a means of being punished for his sins. It’s like he’s saying in the ring: “I know what I do is wrong on some level, but I just can’t express it so I’ll do my penance in the ring.”
What Scorsese realized on a visual level, especially the fight scenes, in Raging Bull is – for lack of a better word – achingly beautiful. Before Raging Bull, boxing matches were pretty much always filmed from outside the ring. Scorsese not only brings the camera into the ring, but turns LaMotta’s fights into a sort of ballet through the use of slow-motion and Thelma Schoonmaker’s grand editing. Just watch the scene where we see the steam raise from Jake’s body. He really does look like a Raging Bull. Time and time again, in slow-mo, we see the punches make contact with his opponent’s body. The blood and sweat flies all over the place. During the final boxing scene of the film, we see a ray of blood splatter the people sitting on the first row. Subsequently, Scorsese slowly moves his camera upward, from Jake’s feet to his face. His entire body – even his legs – is covered in blood, his eye is swollen shut. There is no air of glamour attached to the sweet science in Raging Bull. It’s man against man in there. I have never seen the physical aspect of boxing, the pain and bloodshed that is an essential part of the sport, reproduced in such a realistic and believable manner as it was in Raging Bull. Michael Mann made a decent effort with Ali, where he managed to give the viewer a good sense of the intensity of the sport of boxing, but the film lacked the poetic beauty of Michael Chapman’s black-and-white cinematography.
The team that was responsible for the realization of Taxi Driver is largely the same for Raging Bull. Naturally, there are the usual suspects: Scorsese directing, Schrader writing the screenplay and DeNiro acting. But there’s another man that deserves special praise: Michael Chapman, the director of photography. He did an extraordinary job in Raging Bull and I’m not just talking about the virtuoso boxing scenes. My favourite scene of the entire film comes near the end. Jake LaMotta is arrested in Florida for intercourse with a minor. We see LaMotta in his cell, a single ray of light on him. As a result, LaMotta is a mere silhouette, a shell of the fighter he once was. He is pounding his hands and head to the wall while lamenting: “stupid, stupid, stupid…” Once again, LaMotta punishes himself for his acts. And I think the minimalist photography adds a lot to the emotional impact of that scene.
I’ve not yet gotten around to speaking about the performances. DeNiro, who portrays Jake LaMotta, actually came up with the idea of making the biopic. He became infatuated with LaMotta’s life after having read the man’s autobiography. As soon as Scorsese and Schrader came aboard, the project went into production and DeNiro immersed himself in the persona of The Bronx Bull. He met extensively with the man himself, his brother Joey and even his ex-wife Vicki. I’ve read that DeNiro even trained boxing with LaMotta and trainer Al Silvani, so as to make the fights look more realistic.
However, it is not DeNiro’s acting when in the ring that makes his performance so memorable. It’s his ability to communicate LaMotta’s mental issues. Like I said, there’s always this undercurrent of fear of being left or betrayed running through Jake’s head. The fact that DeNiro is able to effectively communicate this in a genuine way is a testament to his terrific acting skills. To this day, some of the scenes deeply unsettle me. When Jake starts beating his brother, convinced that he had a relationship with Vicki, I just cringe. This is the Robert DeNiro that I’ll remember, not the man making a clown of himself in Analyze This or Meet the Parents.
The other standout role is that of Joe Pesci as Jake’s brother Joey. He is as loyal a brother as he can be, training Jake, making him watch out for his weight and keeping the mafia at bay as best he can. It’s heartbreaking to see him get almost nothing in return from Jake, except distrust and a beating. You can think of Pesci what you want, but at his best, he is one of the finest actors I’ve seen on the screen.
Raging Bull not only captured LaMotta’s pugilist expertise, but also his violent, mentally uncertain persona, beautifully elucidating his success and adversity both inside and outside of the ring.
From now on if I don't like a film that is highly regarded and loved around here I'm just going to do what others do and simply say that it sucks, or that it's boring or that it just isn't for me. That seems to be let go a lot more. By trying to actually explain my reasonings it's made people question it all the more. That or I'll just keep them to myself! 
