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MMA

TIFF20: Bruised

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Bruised (2020) - IMDb

Directed (and starring) Halle Berry, Bruised is a heart-wrenching piece written by Michelle Rosenfarb.  Jackie Justice (Halle Berry) had been an undefeated MMA fighter in the UFC.  When her final fight went downhill fast, Jackie ran, hid, and never turned back.  Completely down on her luck even years later, Jackie is broke, out of work, and without purpose.  She has a less than desirable relationship with her boyfriend, Desi (Adan Canto), who struggles with his own demons. When things couldn’t get worse, Jackie’s past comes back to haunt her in the form of her 6 year old son, Manny, whom she gave up years earlier.  Jackie was having a hard enough time taking care of her own responsibilities so the idea of taking care of a child as well was the shock of a lifetime.  

I have a lot of respect for the female characters in this film.  Jackie is not your typical strong heroine but you cannot help but have respect for all that she’s been through in her past and how it affects her in the present day.  It was fascinating to watch her attempt to navigate bonding with her son when she is so scarred from what happened to her as a child. 

Bruised is full of complex relationships, whether it be mother and daughter, mother and son, trainer and trainee, or partners.  Nothing is one dimensional in this film and I appreciated its willingness to be real.

Bruised premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

the real problem with Streep’s Golden Globes speech

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some say celebs like Streep
should keep
their political rants
off camera when at
a purportedly non-political party,
such as the Golden Globes

meh. i didn’t mind her
speaking her mind.

Trumpsters, i suppose,
(and he, himself,
if Twitter matters)
are troubled by her
oh-so-subtle-and-clever
naming-without-naming
takedown of the prez elect

nah. seemed accurate to me.

she also called for a
“principled press”

check. no argument here.

so what *was* the problem?
this:
“Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick ’em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”

um. okay…?

[full disclosure interlude:
i’m a football fan,
and (specifically) a
mixed martial arts (mma) fan;
in other words: i have a dog in this fight;
i’ve come to the defense of mma before
(here) and pretty much always will;
mma still needing a defense is
part of the issue, of course;
however, i feel like
i’d feel the same way –
i hope i would –
even if said dog
were not my dog]

on the surface,
throwaway ones though
they seem,
these lines of Streep’s
are plenty problematic . . .

(there are no
“outsiders and foreigners”
in football or mma?
(of course there are))

(mixed martial arts
and/or
football “are not the arts”?
like as in some privileged,
elitist, ultimately arbitrary
definition of “the arts”
that includes (presumably)
cinema, but not sport?
says who? you?
or as in
“mixed martial arts is not art”?
says who? you?
i shudder to imagine
today’s mixed martial artists
or Bruce Lee
or 1,000 years of Shaolin monks
being told that their
arts are not art;
i’m saddened that someone
could watch what these
artists can do with their bodies
and not see it as art)

one level down,
the problem intensifies . . .
consider the tone:

what’s it sound like to you?
to me it sounds like disdain.
dismissal.
scoffery.
judgment in general.

this seems plainly problematic to me,
but again it intensifies
when the full speech
is considered;
particularly this tidbit:

“And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”

now i know that these lines,
in context,
were part of the
(justified) Trump takedown;
and i know,
regarding the earlier lines,
that her carefully coded target
(also problematic), really,
was red state, republican,
uneducated, tea party, Trump voting
“white trash” . . .
you know: folks who also
watch Nascar maybe,
and probably listen to “country music”
and almost certainly
“cling to guns and religion”

but . . .
setting that aside . . .

i feel like Meryl Streep
attempted to
*humiliate* and
*bully* and
*disrespect*
any and all
footballers and/or mixed martial artists,
their fans, their respective
histories, cultures, etc. etc.

didn’t she?
i know i personally
felt that way, personally

and didn’t she just say
not to do that,
(from her
powerful public platform)?

this, to me,
was the real problem
with her speech:
the old
speck-and-plank problem;
that old problem where we all
want others to
do as we say not as we do,
where we’re all
hypocrites (Greek origin of the word: actor),
we all
love double standards,
we all
inhabit glass houses,
we all
fail and then fail by
telling others to not fail

you know: this one:

 

and even though
this Austin Powers joke is hilarious
(one of my faves),
and even though Jesus,
when he first told the
speck-and-plank story (here),
was intentionally being
funny via hyperbole,
really,
hypocrisy and double standards
aren’t funny, and constituted
the real problem
with Streep’s speech,
and constitute part of
a real potential problem
for humans in general:
that whenever we talk about others,
we also talk about ourselves

you know what else
Streep said in that speech? this:
“An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like.”

yes.
yes, indeed.
a good thing
to aspire to for
any human,
actor or otherwise;
albeit difficult;
unfortunately,
demonstrably so
in this case