Cinematography: Million Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby is a beautiful movie that captures the audience attention from beginning to finish, but the true magic happens behind the eye of the camera. This being a sad and powerful film the light shading is very important; the shades are all dark tones to set the perfect mood the story. You can see the change in lighting when progressing through the movie: at the beginning of the film the lighting is fairly dark, but as the story continues the mood becomes even darker and you can feel something bad is going to happen. Million Dollar Baby is bathe in cold and dark colors, even the characters are bathe in shadows, always coming in and out of shadows.
When Maggie’s, our protagonist’s, neck is broken and she is reduce to a hospitalized state, paralyze from the neck down, the darkness creeps in even more. Especially for Frankie, who is guilt ridden over pushing Maggie this far even if Maggie, herself, asks to be pushed forward. He literally becomes isolated in his world and this culminates in a moment of devastating beauty. In the final moments of the movie we get this shot of Frankie walking down the hall, which is a dim lit hallway, making his way towards Maggie’s room. At this point Maggie had already asked Frankie to put her out of her misery and he is distraught, but knows that she has lived her dream and she can never box again. When he enters the room we get a close shot of Frankie whispering to Maggie the steps he will do to preform the euthanasia, this shot is completely dark and you can feel the actors emotions of despair and sorrow. As soon as that scene ends, Frankie once again appears walking down the same unlit hallway “without his soul..”
This film very well portrays the feelings of success with the feeling of failures and its all done through mise-en-scene, with the light, the props, the setting, etc etc. this movie deserves all the praise it received and anyone who has the opportunity to watch it should definitely watch it, because it has small details that make all the difference and is worth the watch.
