Visually, Scorsese creates a cinematic spectacle. Hough: Martin Scorsese, ‘Mean Streets’ and Caravaggio’s Moment of Illumination
His story was tweaked to provoke discussions about personal codes and complexes. And it’s important to remember that Raging Bull’s LaMotta is a fictionalized version of the real boxer. As a performer, De Niro shifts between relaxed and domineering postures, between friendly and intimidating facial expressions the art of inspiring a reaction. Jake repeatedly attempts to manipulate situations through small physical gestures, a recurring theme from beginning to end in Raging Bull. Raging Bull’s conflict derives from the subject’s life-long personality complex, as he lives by a certain code and uses intimacy to control others but clearly doesn’t understand why. At home, LaMotta rages out and pushes people away. In the ring, LaMotta finds meaning and success. Thematically, Raging Bull screenwriters Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin make LaMotta a polarizing figure, a man who correlates with Scorsese’s career-long interest in Caravaggio’s sacred and profane art. With Raging Bull, there are so many big character moments, and so people tend to overlook the small intricacies of De Niro’s performance, along with the underlying commentary about character psychology. What specifically makes the performances effective, and how do the filmmakers amplify performances within specific settings? It seems that moviegoers often want to see a reflection of themselves, certainly in 2020, rather than observe and analyze the story being presented. There is loads of content about the characters Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth - about what they mean in a world where masculinity is outmoded - but not a whole lot of substantial analysis about the performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. For example, take a look at think pieces on Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. People often confuse performance with character. Raging Bull is a direct cinematic descendant of Italian Neorealism (movies about survival) and deconstructs a troubled man’s code complex. He directed a movie for self-aware adults with a basic understanding of how emotional intelligence works. But here’s the thing: Scorsese didn’t intend to make an uplifting boxing drama like Rocky. In today’s film culture, the morally righteous are always quick to point out that Raging Bull’s subject, a real-life boxer named Jake LaMotta, isn’t “relatable” or “likable.” And why? Because he does things, in a movie, that should NOT be done in real life. Occasionally, it even gets lumped in with Scorsese’s “gangster movies” as a shorthand to dismiss the director as a one-trick pony.
Raging Bull - a complex character study about methods and codes of conduct - all too often gets reductively tagged as Martin Scorsese’s toxic masculinity sports movie that allowed Robert De Niro to lose (and gain) weight in pursuit of an Oscar.
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