Million Dollar Baby

I got to thinking this morning about something. I read an article about the Oscar nominees. Within the article the writer mentioned that there were 2 movies about euthanasia. I saw one of them a few weeks ago, Million Dollar Baby. It was a great movie, great acting, great directing, everything you want in a movie really. Except the story has had me bothered now for several weeks. If you havent seen the movie then stop reading now because I will give away something about the movie. (Unless you don’t care.)

I don’t remember character names, but there is Clint Eastwood the trainer and Hilary Swank is the trainee. The movie started with her begging to be trained and Clint not wanting to have anything to do with her. Clint has a daughter that he writes to, but never hears from. He talks about mistakes in his past, so you have to assume that he did something to break the relationship with his daughter. So Clint makes this journey from having no one to love and feeling completely unlovable, to falling in love with Hilary as a father to a daughter, wanting to take care of her the rest of her life, completely devoted to her. Hilary also makes a journey. She goes from this ignorant wannabe, even ignorant about her family and their concern for her, to realizing the world is a cold hard place and she wants no part of it. The whole time she was fighting she went by a nickname that Clint Eastwood picked out for her. It was in a Gaelic, so she didn’t know the meaning. But every time she got in the ring and won, this name was chanted over her.

So in the biggest fight for her life, she gets injured and becomes paralyzed from her neck down. But actually that wasn’t the biggest fight for her life. Her true fight should have been being paralyzed and fighting to live. However, she asks Clint to kill her. He refuses at first, but then he gives in. Oh, how selfish of her!!!! He would have taken care of her. So, he comes in to kill her, but before he does, he reveals her nickname, "My Darling, My Daughter." Oh, how everything with in me wanted to screen out at that moment, "Don’t be so selfish. How can you be that way?" I wanted her so badly to say, "Wait, hold on, I want to live because you want me to live." But no, her selfishness would win the day and he killed her. So the movie ends with him sitting in a dinner somewhere in the south, alone, rejected, and one can only assume what he did soon after.

Maybe you have gotten the idea about what stirs me about this movie. It is the girl's selfishness. Who cares if her life was so aweful. Sure it was, but wasn’t being paralyzed in that bed really the biggest fight of her life? Shouldn’t her training have taken over at that time? She wasn’t any kind of fighter. Sure they portrayed her as fighting to die (she makes several attempts to kill herself), but that is the easy way. It is the fighting to live that is the hardest fight we all have. Fighting to not allow relationships to die with those around us. Fighting to live like Christ. We are in a battle. Hilary threw in the towel and gave up, without considering what those around her think at all.