I’m waiting for the coffee to finish perking so I can officially begin my Saturday. Bible to read. Pages to write. Things to do. So, until I am fully awake, I will post the thoughts of a couple of others.
***
The story is, by now, a familiar
one: A female boxer from Missouri takes a terrible beating in the ring
and winds up brain-damaged. She’s initially suicidal, but with the
help of family and friends, she rallies, takes up painting, and speaks
out about her life and the value of all life.
Wait a minute, you say: That’s not how
Million Dollar Baby ends. In the Academy Award-winning film, the
injured boxer begs her coach to kill her because she can’t face
life as a quadriplegic, and he complies. But a real-life boxer, whose
life story likely inspired the film, says the ending is bunk.
Like the boxer in Million Dollar Baby,
Katie Dallam was a Missouri girl who grew up in poverty. In 1996, Katie
began boxing. After just two months of training, her trainer urged her
into a professional match and Katie stepped into the ring with a far
more experienced boxer. By the end of four two-minute rounds, the
referee stopped the fight, but it was too late. Katie had received 150
blows to the head and was comatose by the time she reached a hospital.
Doctors told Katie’s sister that she “probably
wouldn’t make it, and, if she did, would most likely be a
vegetable.”
The above is an excerpt from a March 10 commentary on BreakPoint. Worth reading.
And then I read this March 11 blog post:
(Ahem) As I have said several times, my biggest shock over Million Dollar baby
was not that it was made, and was not that it was such an unfair
caricature of Christians, and not that it was such a criminally
incomplete treatment of the next BIG MORAL issue that will ravage our
society.
My biggest shock over this film was why so many
critics lined up to lavish praise on it. Including the Christians.
(Honestly, the only thing praise-worthy in the film was Morgan Freeman,
who is always brilliant.)
The above excerpt is from the always interesting Church of the Masses and her gripe isn’t the skewed message of the film nearly so much as the poor writing/storytelling behind it. So if you are interested in how to (and how not to) tell a story, this one is worth reading.
***
Coffee’s done. Outta here.
-rlh-
