Million Dollar Baby: It's Not Just A Movie About Boxing

Million Dollar Baby is the best movie about boxing that I have ever watched. This is the second time I have watched this movie and unlike the first time I watched which I only watched for fun, the second time's a different one. The theme of euthanasia were the unexpected turn of event in this movie. I was not prepared for that coming and it made me emotional when I watched the final scene where Frank let Maggie die peacefully or another way to say, release her from the misery and the pain.

Source: IMDb

The death of Maggie was foreshadowed before. In the scene where Maggie was working in the restaurant and she was taking the leftover steak on the table but there was a guest looking at her and she said it was for her dog. But it was for Maggie and she ate the steak alone. She was in poverty. It was like what happened to her father’s dog before when she told Frank about the love that her father had given to the dog. He loved the dog so much that when the dog was old and crippled, he ended that dog’s life. And yet, the past was her future when Frank helped her to end her life like what she wanted.

Paul Haggis and Clint Eastwood want to say that euthanasia is a difficult decision when they have to end the life of someone or something. It is not easy to let it go but sometimes they cannot see to see the pain that someone or something is going through. Maybe letting it go is the act of kindness and redemption. In a better place, they can be peaceful and have no more pains.

It is a difficult plot device because the director must build the plot from the beginning to the accident which makes the character live in pain. In this movie, Clint created suspense to the audience. The success of Maggie’s boxing career was blooming and suddenly, she was paralyzed. That was the way Clint Eastwood told the story of euthanasia.

It feel that euthanasia is the act of kindness and humane. It is not about killing someone and committing a crime. With me, I think that euthanasia can help to release a person from a pain which they can never be recovered. Saying goodbye to them to the other world and hope that in a better place, they won’t have to live in the pains they had suffered and no more the misery that they had brought in the previous life.