What kind of sport is boxing? In Clint Eastwood’s eyes, it’s as miserable and painful as life. Eastwood’s eyes, is almost as tragic and painful as life’s self-mastery, and it is difficult to say whether this practice is meaningful or not. Maggie, born in a family of slime, is still working as a waitress in her 30s, and can only bring home leftover steak for dinner. What does life mean to her? The only gift God gave her was that she fell in love with boxing, and slightly talented, and met someone who was willing to teach her. But what did she get out of it? A few unimportant victories, a few moments of cheers from strangers, and finally a paralyzed body in bed, biting her tongue instead. Was it worth it? Not even some orgasm-like victory, or even just meeting a dirty bitch who stole a punch from her in a fit of rage and was just ruined. Light and airy
I asked my friend why anyone would love boxing. It goes without saying that the injuries are sometimes worse: Freeman lost an eye, and all those ruptured spleens, disfigurement, and being beaten half to death …… What is the fun of it? My friend said: “It’s like all sports, it’s fun. It’s infinitely more fun when they hit someone.” The movie says it’s a sport about dignity: to keep your dignity, you have to take away the other person’s dignity. If you think about it, perhaps boxing is an attempt to surface the problems of life: taking the damage, hitting the opponent, and gaining meaning in each blow.
Look at Maggie’s life and her mother’s against each other. Her mother may not have been hurt at all: when her daughter bought her a house, she was only thinking about whether her welfare payments would be cancelled. When her daughter was lying in bed with a tube in her throat, she took her other two children to Disneyland for a few days before visiting her, just to get her to sign the legal papers to transfer the house into her name. She lived a pretty good life, lazy and unconcerned, weighing 300 pounds. Can’t see any tragedy coming out of her life, even if you think her life itself is a tragedy, but who isn’t? No one can judge her, unless you say she doesn’t love her daughter, which isn’t a crime. If you had to choose one or the other, what kind of life would you choose? Maggie’s? Her mother’s? Don’t bite off more than you can chew about Maggie’s. You may be essentially living her mother’s kind of life: avoiding all pain and damage and living.
If Eastwood’s character is divine, it is because he is full of guilt for everything: for Freeman, who has suffered for 23 years for a fault that was not his own; for his daughter, who insists on writing her a letter of confession and going to church every day; for Maggie, when the priest warns him not to help Maggie kill herself because “you will be completely lost and you will never be able to go back “, he still sneaked into the hospital late at night and pulled out her tubes. This, of course, brought more guilt. He said to Freeman: It’s all your fault. But he knew he couldn’t blame anyone, and he looked at Maggie’s mother with less anger and more helplessness and pity. They fought fate together, and then lost to it, there is nothing to complain about it. Those who always feel they can survive the battle are only optimistic for a while.
The practice hall that does not know how the ice is put into the bottle of Daniel is similar to us: until he was beaten and bruised to know that he can not boxing. Then after a long time, he showed up at the practice gym again and said: I understand that everyone loses.
How to win in life is not a proposition. How to lose is a proper proposition. How to live under a life destined to lose? There are no winners in the boxing ring: no matter what victory comes with pain. And this is perhaps why some people love boxing: to feel the meaning of life more truly. Many people don’t realize that life is a battle that must be lost: you will hurt, you will grow old, you will die, you will lose everything. But you can still be a hero. That’s the most inspiring thing about this movie: it’s not about winning, it’s about how to lose.