Cinderella Man: I fell for it.

I was looking forward to seeing Cinderella Man. When I saw Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti, two of my personal favourites, in the trailer (at Star Wars, no less), I was practically in the ticket line last month. With that type of enthusiasm, I always kind of expect disappointment. This movie did not follow through with that. I left the theatre chanting "BRADDOCK! BRADDOCK! BRADDOCK!" And you know what? I wasn't the only one.

The movie, directed by Ron Howard, unfolds the story of James J. Braddock (Crowe), the "Cinderella Man" of the Great Depression. Runyon so named him that because, after he had already been deemed washed up, Gentleman Jim struck back, and all of America rose to its feet. It was as if all of the desperate hopes of a depressed and sagging nation were poured on to this one man. However, though based in fact, Cinderella Man is not just grave robbing. It uses the magic of movies, a Capra-esque tool one might have thought lost in Hollywood, to create a myth.

I don't use the term myth as a derogatory word, meaning lie. Rather, in Joseph Campbell fashion, I use it to refer to those stories that create heroes and bring the listener, or viewer, into the narrative through a ritualistic act of communal understanding. THAT is what this film did.

On the surface, this film had its strengths and its weaknesses. The Everlast product placements were a little annoying, and Crowe's new widow's peak was odd. The misplaced and under-developed preoccupation with the quiet suffering of the “women behind the men” bordered on offensively ridiculous in places. The score is largely forgettable, and, especially in the first scenes, the actors appear uncomfortable with their accents. Paul Giamatti, a man I would love to fold up and carry around in my pocket, sounded like he was doing his worst Groucho Marx impersonation for his first dialogue. However, after the opening sequence, which shows Jim before the Depression, the movie opens up and becomes credible and absolutely absorbing. About a half hour in I forgot to take notes and just watched, only occasionally surfacing to do my duty.

First, the cinematography was, in most cases, really very serviceable and unobtrusive (with the exceptions being during the fight scenes, but we'll discuss those later). There were at least two times when Howard visually referenced De Sica's 1948 masterpiece about Italy's post-war depression, The Bicycle Thief. The first reference was to emphasize the hero relationship between a boy and his father, a running theme in both films. The other was when Howard had the camera linger just a moment after our hero leaves the welfare office window, just long enough to focus on the next man in line. These films lingered, on a welfare desk in one and a pawnshop wicket in the other, to remind us that the families followed in the respective films are not the only ones suffering. The references do not distract. The scenes alone communicate the required meaning to those who have not seen The Bicycle Thief (or The Bicycle Thieves, depending on your translation). But for those of us who loved De Sica's film, it communicated a wealth of hurt by using a pre-existing cultural metaphor. In those moments, Cinderella Man was placed into a long history of misery. This was a beautiful idea.

Second, the performances, from my amateur perspective, made the writing sing. I mean, sure, "You're the champion of my heart" IS a horrible line. Perhaps Renee Zellweger (whose face was puckered up enough in some sort of surprised/baffled look to make me wonder exactly WHO had been beaten up by Max Baer- Jimmy or her) was not up to the task of making that particular line work. Nevertheless, I was floored by the acting of Crowe and Giamatti. These two men may not naturally come to mind as a dynamic duo, but they riffed off each other like a dream team.

I used to rave about the million words spoken by Crowe's eyebrow, but Giamatti's upper lip has taken the crown. Surely that lip is a thing of wondrous beauty and should be bronzed. Anyone who has seen Giamatti's smash performance in American Splendor (2003), which rose him form the ranks of Woody Allen's regular bit players, knows of what lip thing I mean. It's that cross between a witch's hiss and a camel-spit move with his lip that manages to suggest both massive, frustrated rage as well as a controlled and submissive pain as experienced by a man who is too used to being beat down. It looks just like his character would like to tell them all to go to hell, but stops and thinks again. This lip may be one of the greatest acting talents to hit Hollywood since Cary Grant's neck muscles, and it is worth holding on to!

Finally, we come to what many might think is the main point of the movie: The fighting. The fight scenes were good, but not that much better than what we would expect. The mobile camera, visceral close ups and over cranking (i.e. slow motion) is pretty standard in a post-Raging Bull world. However, unlike Raging Bull (1980), Cinderella Man is in colour, and the scenes were rendered a little sickening because of this. Whirling colour, combined with violence, can be a bit much. The slow-motion flying mouthpiece, an over-done bit of tripe, was WAY too much. Further, there was a moment there when I thought I might be watching a Gatorade commercial, there were so many close-ups of sweaty brows! However, the fights were fairly well done, if a little over directed (and a bit samey by the Lewis/Lansky bouts), and they were by no means a major debit. In the end, this movie was not about fights. It was about heart, as trite as that may sound. The picture tells us that sometimes you don't need a KO to win. Sometimes weathering a storm and waiting for the cards is enough. That is a powerful message, and one needed now as much as it was needed when Braddock was made the champion of the under dogs.

While the Toronto Sun recently accused the film of "sanitizing" the Depression, I see no real evidence to support this claim. True enough, this film does not rival The Grapes of Wrath (1940) for sheer oppressive sorrow. What it did do was show a fully contained world with a good level of detail in props and costuming, and portray the Depression for what it was- a time in which individual families had to make some very tough decisions about their day to day survival. The reality of unemployment hit harder here, perhaps even more so then in Grapes of Wrath, because here it was a small under-current played throughout the whole life of the family. When a man blows up in frustration because he has to take his kid to a Church charity birthday party, and when a woman has to send her kids away because their electricity has been cut off, that has effect. I don’t cry in films, as a rule, but in two scenes I was surprised to feel a tear or two.

Further, aside from some sly hints that the upper class were living off misery, there are no real bad guys upon which to pin this sorrow and dim its effect. When the power man cuts off a starving family's electricity, we might think he's a bad man. However, when that same power man says that he has to do his job, because he has kids of his own, we understand. Poverty creates poor-on-poor violence and offence, and that is the true horror of economic depression.

We see some standard, yet effective, old techniques to evoke the Depression in this film. For example, we see the stark contrast between the depression of the time and the jazzy, cheerful, optimistic music of the era. Americans (and Canadians, too, I should add) lived in hell, but the radio showed them “America” as they wished it were: lively and hopeful. This movie is not about boxing. Its underpinning is one of America and its relationship with entertainment. As we learned from Gladiator (2000), bread and circuses are needed to keep down the lower classes. However, sometimes it is also needed to keep them up.