Million Dollar Baby - Julia Ribeiro

The movie kicks off with what seems, a scenery of redemption, where each character is trying to figure out a way to "pay" for his or hers past mistakes. First we have Frankie Dunn, an ex-boxer who owns a gym in a "forgotten" place of LA, lives with the guilt of letting his friend Scrap continue a fight that cost him his eye, and has distanced himself from his now grown daughter. Then we have Maggie, a poor waitress who is trying to change her life through the art of boxing - as if this was her last chance to achieve at least some success.

To me, it seems like when Maggie comes along (not initially though), Dunn sees a chance to redeem himself from past mistakes - as if he had a second chance of "re-doing his life". This is because with Maggie he will get to take risks emotionally and professionally. He can create a connection with Maggie, that can un-do all his wrong doings in relation to his relationship to his daughter. Professionally, he can try to achieve success, try to prove to himself, maybe to others, that he is an experienced professional in boxing, and that he can win the gold. Who knew however, that this would lead to a fateful dilemma that would end in tragedy?

As we reach the final scenes of the movie, and Maggie is finally going to fight for the title, the surely expectancy of someone who has never seen before, is that Maggie will take home the gold, Frankie's image will be restored, the gym glorified, and Scrap will somehow be able to move on; a happy ending.  However, Million Dollar Baby does not end like a Rocky Balboa movie, and instead as a greek tragedy. The fight climaxes when a round has ended and Billie "The Blue Bear" looks as if she know she will be defeated. The bell has rung and no more punches are allowed, however, she decides to throw one at Maggie. What was supposed to be just one more punch, turn into a broken neck, an ended career, and tearful audience. The rules in sports are clearly there to be followed because many of them can get extremely violent in a matter of seconds. From this punch, I retrieve 3 obvious moral dilemmas:
1) Should the rules ever be broken?
2) Should someone be punished for un-intendended consequences? (I don't think Billie's intention was to break Maggie's neck, but just to hurt her. So should she be judged for her intentions, or for the consequences themselves?)
3) Should someone that has done similar actions as Billie ever be allowed in that sport again?
There can be many more dilemmas coming out of just this scene of the movie, but those are one of the main three, that can even be interpreted a little bit differently.

The audience then learns what they feared the most: Maggie is paralyzed from the neck down. After she loses a leg, she asks Frankie to put her out of her misery, who at first absolutely denies doing such thing. He has grown attached to Maggie, and as mentioned before, sees her as his daughter, so of course he would say no. The chances of him saying yes to her proposition become even slimmer when we take in account the fact he is religious, a serious Catholic - which brings in even more moral dilemmas involving this whole situation he is put in. Maggie argues that she wants to leave this world and remember it for the good things, remember this experience she went through while she still can.

Ahhh, then comes the question: Under what circumstances is it right to end one's life, or help end another's life, because of a loss or disability? That is why this movie was so controversial.
The movie itself, specifically the scene where he turns off her machines and injects Maggie with adrenaline, sets humane values against religious morals, where it's a sin to take somebody's life. Taking it just from a Catholic point of view and alienating all the other factors, this wouldn't even be a dilemma.

However, Frankie is put forth in a situation where he has to outweigh his values, morals, and ethics, to decide which would be the best action to take. Let's say if Maggie were to be his daughter (because that is how he saw her): Would he suffer more with her death, than to see her suffer? Would her happiness be more important than his? Parents usually want to see their child happy, and suffering would be the last thing they would want for him or her. If her happiness was to be gone, then he would have to break his moral/ethical/religious barriers in order to make her happiness an order. So from a parent's perspective this becomes a really hard moral dilemma.

Furthermore, the way this dilemma is solved suggests that a life with disability, or some kind of physical loss is not worth living anymore. Critics' reviews defy Clint Eastwood (the director and Frankie at the same time) even further, claiming that euthanasia or the ending of someone's life was even portrayed as something heroic. However he responds: "The dilemma of finally reaching some revival in his life, and then having to lose it is a tragic situation. It's a tragedy that could have been written by the Greeks or Shakespeare." Clearly suggesting that this was a master-piece, a work of art.