#4 ‘Raging Bull’
A Testosterone-Soaked Opera of Misery
Oh joy, another entry in the ever-swelling canon of cinema celebrating the tortured genius of the violent, emotionally stunted man-child. Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese’s 1980 black-and-white tribute to the boxing brute Jake LaMotta, is less a film and more a 129-minute apology note from American cinema to the patriarchy.
Let’s be clear: Raging Bull is technically a masterpiece. The cinematography is lyrical, the editing precise, the sound design visceral. It is a triumph of form. And like many triumphs of form, it has all the moral clarity of a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving dinner who wants to “just play devil’s advocate” about women in sports.
Robert De Niro throws himself (and his rapidly inflating waistline) into the role of LaMotta, a man so emotionally constipated he weaponizes his jealousy, inadequacy, and infantile rage against every woman who dares breathe in his presence. He hits his wife. He accuses her of cheating. He smashes a door in because she complimented another boxer’s looks. And what does the camera do? It caresses him. It sympathizes. It lionizes.
This isn’t just a character study—it’s a shrine to male agony. There is no reckoning. No feminist lens. No actual critique. Just the slow, mournful descent of yet another man who couldn't be bothered to go to therapy, so he terrorized everyone around him instead. And we’re expected to call it art.
The women, of course, are cardboard cutouts with eyes. Cathy Moriarty plays Vickie, Jake’s teenage bride (yes, teenage, because what better way to say “America” than grown men marrying barely-legal girls). She mostly stands still, speaks softly, and serves as a punching bag for Jake’s grotesque insecurities. Her greatest crime? Looking. At. Someone. Else. For this, she earns beatings and accusations—while we’re meant to empathize with the guy giving them.
And what does the film teach us? That the man who destroys himself and everyone around him still deserves our tears. That the boxer in the ring is noble because he bleeds, even if he’s the reason everyone else is bleeding at home. That masculinity is tragic, not toxic. That violence, when aestheticized properly, is poignant.
I watched Raging Bull with the same expression I reserve for discovering a used Band-Aid in a public pool: disgust, with a tinge of morbid fascination.
To those who insist the film is not celebrating LaMotta, merely portraying him, I say: when every frame is drenched in operatic grandeur, when the violence is rendered in slow-motion ballet, when the abuser gets the final word—what, exactly, are we meant to take away?
Watch it, if you must. But don’t mistake it for a story about redemption. It’s a cinematic shrine to male misery—a misery entirely self-inflicted, yet endlessly mourned. And if you find yourself sympathizing with Jake LaMotta, might I suggest a long, hard look in the mirror—and maybe a call to your ex.
1.5 out of 5 brass knuckles
(That extra half-star is for Thelma Schoonmaker, because God knows a woman had to clean this mess up in the edit suite.)
