10:35 AM EST on Tuesday, March 1, 2005

I TAKE as my text the film Million Dollar Baby, directed and starred in by Clint Eastwood (who got his start as an actor in Westerns) as Frankie Dunn, a trainer of boxers, with Hilary Swank playing Maggie Fitzgerald, an aspiring boxer. The movie has attracted considerable attention, and in fact was crowned at the Academy Awards with the honors for best picture, best director, best actress, and best supporting actor (Morgan Freeman). It has also been vilified by commentators on the religious right, who object to its alleged espousal of euthanasia. In the film, Maggie, who has developed into a fine boxer, is seriously injured in her big fight -- so seriously that she is bed-ridden and immobile, unable to speak and with no future. She wants to die.

In the end Frankie, her trainer and mentor, ends her misery by killing her. Many viewers have found the film excellent and moving.

The religious right, however, is not concerned with cinematic excellence; it is upset because the movie seems to promote mercy killing, the taking of human life. People of the religious right regard life as sacrosanct, not to be terminated artificially under any circumstances.

If they knew what the movie was really about, though, they would have no objection. I am here to set them straight, and to reveal the movie as an allegory of a cowboy and his horse.

There are many clues. One is the character of Frankie Dunn. He is the traditional figure of the cowboy -- rootless, lonely, with no attachments, but with an undefined yet deeply regretted past, for which he cannot atone and thus find redemption.

In the movie, to be sure, Eastwood has a boxing gym, but one notices immediately that there are square enclosures -- boxing rings; these rings are corral substitutes.

Vagrant and footloose people inhabit the place. There is even a sidekick, played by Mr. Freeman: an old fighter (cowpoke) who has taken up the career of dispensing wise advice. We have no idea where any of these people come from, and it would appear that no one in the film has any particular plan or future -- very much like traditional movie cowboys.

Into this male scene enters a young woman (Ms. Swank), who wants our trainer to train her to be a boxer and to arrange bouts for her. She is gritty and determined but unskilled, and wants to persuade Frankie to break her in and introduce her to the fight game.

She succeeds in winning him over, and he trains her. She proves to be a lethal puncher, knocking out her opponents in the first moments of many of her fights. Gradually she progresses in her ring career, winning as she goes, until finally she meets the reigning champion, a skilled but dirty fighter.

Our heroine is clearly on the point of winning this fight, too, when suddenly she loses her concentration, turns away from the fallen champion, and is hit hard from behind when the champion gets up before the count of ten. Maggie falls onto her stool, rendered paralyzed and unconscious. She loses her bout, and, as it proves, her future and then her life.

I have telegraphed some of my punches already, but I think that the alert reader will realize that this is an allegory of a cowboy and his horse, whom he loves and trains, and who, after winning a number of contests, stumbles in the big show and has to be put down. The cowboy then rides sadly off into the sunset.

I present here the original plot and characters: A rootless man, a cowboy with an ill-defined past, notices a neglected filly on the ranch, and takes an interest in her. He trains her, brings her along, and enters her in a number of races. The filly is unexpectedly good and wins her contests, developing a considerable following as she does.

Finally the big day arrives, and all are expectant but apprehensive, for the horse may be in over her head. Nonetheless, after a rough start she picks up speed, and is on the point of passing the odds-on favorite when the favorite's vile jockey causes her to trip by swerving his horse into her.

She falls, and injures her leg. We hope that the horse can be saved, and the cowboy tries to save her, but her leg has been broken, and in the end he recognizes that the case is hopeless and he puts her down. He then rides off on his lonely journey from out of despair and into nowhere.

The movie is thus a Western of the traditional sort, with cowboy replaced by trainer and filly replaced by fighter. The action is transferred from the ranch to the city, from the corral to the ring.

Unless conservative commentators object to putting down injured horses, they can have no objection to this film. The Academy clearly approves. My job is done.

William F. Wyatt is a professor or classics emeritus at Brown University.