And yet, we never get the sense that, over the course of his tumultuous life, boxer Jake La Motta ever really won anything of value. The elusive goal of achieving true greatness -- either from within or in any other sense -- was never worked into the schedule of his life.
If ever there was a sport where the personality of the competitor is inexorably linked to their athletic ability, it is boxing. If you are by nature a volatile and angry person, where else can you vent your frustrations but in the safe -- and legal -- confines of a boxing ring, free to pound the living tar out of another human being.
Martin Scorsese's biopic Raging Bull doesn't necessarily strive to make Jake La Motta into a protagonist, but it does strive to depict his primal impulses as, whether right or wrong, part of his larger-than-life persona. Played by Robert De Niro in a powerfully physical performance, La Motta's two most important relationships are with his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) and his 15-year old love, Vicky (Cathy Moriarty). Ironically, these are the two people he pounds senseless both physically and emotionally, and has certainly managed to alienate. By this point, La Motta has become a lackluster stand-up comedian without joy or direction.
From a technical perspective, the movie is one of the best. Shot in black and white, the fight sequences from La Motta's prime boxing years are among the most graphic and distorted ever put to film. The ring itself is a large and 4 dimensional entity that keeps changing sizes to fit the camera angle. Buckets of sweat and blood gush from punches in alternating slow and fast motion. The lighting makes Jake appear triumphant in some shots and horrific in others (particularly in a scene near the end of the picture when he finds himself in a darkened cell for having been caught with an underaged callgirl).
La Motta's jealousy overpowers him in and out of the ring, and dictates his every action and every thought. His very doubt that he will ever own anything (the Title, his wife) leads to his own undoing in an almost Shakespearean fall from grace. As his anger consumes him in scene after scene, the stunning question Scorsese asks is quite telling: was there ever any grace to begin with?
