Great Character: Jake LaMotta (“Raging Bull”)
This month’s Great Character theme: Sports figures. Today: Jason Cuthbert’s guest post features Jake LaMotta from the 1980 movie Raging Bull (screenplay by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin, book by Jake LaMotta with Joseph Carter and Peter Savage).
For Round 4 of the championship movie match-up between director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, we get something quite different than the gangster stereotype that has wrongfully branded their brilliantly diverse collaborations. We all love their Mafioso dramas Mean Streets, Goodfellas and Casino — but lets not forget that De Niro also made the metamorphosis into a sociopath in Taxi Driver, a saxophone player in New York, New York, a delusional standup comic in The King of Comedy, a brutal stalker in Cape Fear and one intensely temperamental middleweight professional boxer in Raging Bull.
Raging Bull plot summary from IMDB:
An emotionally self-destructive boxer’s journey through life, as the violence and temper that leads him to the top in the ring, destroys his life outside it.
To raise the stakes even further, De Niro’s portrayal of this real-life Rocky Balboa, known to boxing fans as Jake LaMotta, also had to live up to the expectations of Mr. LaMotta himself, who worked on the film as a consultant. Mr. Maestro — Martin Scorsese — employed the screenwriting savvy of his Taxi Driver comrade Paul Schrader and fellow NYU college chum Mardik Martin who also helped blueprint the scripts for Mean Streets and New York, New York. The magnificent end result became one hard-to-love protagonist who was also his own troubled antagonist.
Jake LaMotta’s wild rise and fall in the ring, and in his own bedroom, became a bold biographical drama upon its release in 1980. Raging Bull rebelliously utilized shadowy shades of black and white to capture Jake’s Italian-American Bronx enclave of the 1940’s. Its brain-bashing warrior matches also defied conventional methods with surreal smoke and animal sound effects.
The title of the film maybe be Raging Bull, but call this guy an “animal” and you are liable to have your personal space transformed into a boxing ring — with a blood puddle to lay your head in. Much like the animal world, boxers also subscribe to a “survival of the fittest” ethos in an effort to get fed instead of being food. Unfortunately, Jake’s primal urges to express himself violently often interfere with his desire to be respected as a decent human being.
The closer that people get to Jake, the further he seems to actively alienate them. Does Jake feel guilty that people still love him even after he hurts them with relentless, uncontrollable fury? Does Jake believe deep down inside his guarded heart that his wife Vicki deserves someone more loving, sexually attentive, educated or closer in age? It becomes difficult to determine if his motivations are love or hate when he is brutalizing the very person he seems hell-bent on protecting from others — Vicki herself.
LaMotta’s frequent opponent Sugar Ray Robinson may have been his nemesis in the ring, but outside of the spotlight, Jake’s real enemies were the knockout blows he suffered from his jealousy and guilt — the key ingredients that fueled his rage. Jake’s jealousy over his angelically gorgeous, much younger wife Vicki extends to his married brother Joey, underworld affiliates Tommy Como and Salvy, and even Tony Janiro, a younger more baby-faced boxer that Jake can only assume that Vicki prefers over him.
Jake’s neighbors label him an animal during his loud, erratic domestic disputes. His wife Vicki demotes his manhood to the animal kingdom during his hostile envy-fueled rants. Also, when he is literally caged like an animal in a Florida prison he painfully proclaims and seemingly begs for his humanity.
JAKE LA MOTTA: (crying in his Dade County Stockade cell after ramming his head and fists into the wall): “They called me an animal. I’m not an animal.”
Jake appears to find it therapeutic to get beaten to a pulp in the ring — like a self-crucifixion to wash away past sins that he reluctantly wears like a misspelled tattoo.
JAKE LA MOTTA: I’ve done a lot of bad things, Joey. Maybe it’s comin’ back to me. Who knows? I’m a jinx maybe. Who the hell knows?
But stubborn pride interrupts any genuine spiritual transformation from lost soul to humble servant when LaMotta attempts to spite his sacrifices with vain ploys to appear to be “the boss.” In other words, if Jake is going to lose it all, he feels he must still claim victory by remaining on his own two feet.
JAKE LA MOTTA: “You never got me down, Ray. Ya hear me? Never got me down.”
Whether you feel sorry for Jake’s self-destructive spiral or you ultimately believe that he deserved every lonely, dazed and confused moment of it — Robert De Niro’s portrayal of Jake La Motta will scar you indefinitely. If you dig deep enough past his rough, reptilian exterior, there is much more than violence, selfishness and arrogance. LaMotta is a man who can’t act humble in his be-tough neighborhood, can’t be humble in his be-tough profession, but is ultimately humbled by his own guilt — that dark secret guilt that only him and God have shared.
If only Jake could have realized that the length of his boxing arena didn’t overlap into his private life he wouldn’t have had to endure so many emotional beatings — instigated by his own closed fists. For his complicated hard knock road to humanity, his wins against opponents in the ring and losses to jealousy and guilt outside of it, and his bloody desire to relinquish his sins — Jake LaMotta is one psychologically complex GREAT CHARACTER.
Want one sign of how compelling a character LaMotta is in this movie? Raging Bull has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.