Raging Bull: "You didn't get me down, Ray"

Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull captures the life of Jake LaMotta, a middleweight boxing champ famous for his success and eventual self-destruction inside and out of the ring. This film doesn't fit quite as nicely into the boxing movie genre as one would expect. Whereas in other films, the boxer must contend with some antagonistic force, literal or figurative, in Raging Bull, LaMotta is his own worst enemy.

The film begins with LaMotta fighting Jimmy Reeves and suffering a loss by technicality. From that moment onward he becomes dead-set on becoming the champion of his weight class.This drive that overtakes LaMotta, leading him to success is also the source of his downfall. He becomes impassioned. Enraged. Paranoid. Insatiable. Almost immediately this becomes evident, as he begins to have an affair and eventually leaves his current wife for a newer, younger(16 to be exact) woman(girl). He is transformed over the course of the film, worsening with each scene.

 The violent descent of LaMotta reaches it's peak when he finally snaps under the paranoia and goes on a familial-beating-spree.
Seeking perfection, constantly in the public eye, working himself constantly, LaMotta has been co-opted by a more primitive mindset. Head trauma and intense competition have made him hyper-aware of possible threats to the stability of his life and career, so much so that he becomes a threat himself. Few can live under the self-imposed discipline of a prize-fighter, and no-one wants to live with the paranoia, intense scrutiny, and bouts of violence LaMotta imposed upon his family.

Reaching his absolute lowest point, LaMotta is thrown in jail for allowing underage girls into his nightclub. At the end of this clip, after an enraged, animalistic tantrum, LaMotta is heard repeating: "I'm not an animal, I'm not an animal".  The line, as well as the films title "Raging Bull", which LaMotta almost references in his attempts at poetry with the line : "a stage, for this bull to rage", connect the concepts of animalistic behavior, with our boxer Jake LaMotta. Elephant, horse, eagle, and bull sounds are also used during LaMotta's fights to really hammer in the metaphor. This is, by the way, an example of the amazing level of detail that was put into the films sound design, as discussed by "playingwithresearch" and Raging Bull's own "After the Fight".

Both the boxer, and boxing in general, are depicted as a very primal expression of emotion. Scorsese does not shy away from depicting the brutality of the sport, his scenes being full of wounds, blood, hits and falls. The boxers are almost dehumanized in the above scene, with LaMotta all but literally becoming a punching bag, and the enemy fighter, seen through Jake's POV as a menacing, growling, almost devilish force. On top of that, as Justin Morrow mentions in his blog, the use of different rings really helps to nail the different emotions LaMotta feels, from claustrophobic and in danger like a caged animal, to walking with confidence, like a lion on the hunt. Too important not to mention, LaMotta's line in this scene: "You didn't get me down, Ray", perfectly captures the tenacity and attitude that drives our boxer.

LaMotta is depicted as animal-like not because he is particularly wild or dangerous, but because of how incompatible he is with modern civilization. Like a vestigial tail, the quirks, tendencies, and thought patterns that man once needed to survive, and allowed LaMotta to succeed in boxing, frequently estrange him from the world around him, including his own family. Without his support network, LaMotta is left to decay in the world he does not belong in. He could have been a contender in another epoch, but in this one, he's just a raging bull, battering against his cage.