127: Substantive Cinema | Raging Bull (1980) feat. Abby Olcese

2023/5/28

The Substance

Frequently requested episodes will be transcribed first

Shownotes Transcript

If you're in Kansas City and listening to this when it drops, we hope you can join us for a Substantive Cinema screening of Raging Bull at Screenland Armour at 3:45pm!)

How have we gotten this far without covering a Martin Scorsese film?! It's wild. Today we break the Scorsese seal with perhaps his deepest dive into the human condition with his Oscar-winning 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull.

The film is famous for many things, it's Oscar wins (and even more, its losses), the launching of Joe Pesci as a mainstream actor, the incredible black & white cinematography from Michael Chapman, but more than anything else, what Raging Bull does is give viewers the opportunity to fully embody the life of its complex protagonist, Jake "The Raging Bull" LaMotta. Scorsese and DeNiro show us the highest highs and lowest lows of the human experience here and it's hard not to be taken in. LaMotta is not an overly sympathetic character but he is one that is deeply empathetic. You want to see him win and to be a good husband and father and brother. He often makes the wrong choices but in those decisions, audiences get to see the darker sides of themselves reflected and the tragedies that LaMotta brings on himself serve as a warning to where our basest impulses can lead us. It's not an easy watch but it can be an immensely rewarding one when viewed through the lens of our common humanity and seeking for a redemption that we fear we may be unworthy of.

If you end up watching it, we'd love to hear from you! Email us a voice note or send a voicemail and we''ll play it on a future episode!

Follow Philip )& Abby )on Letterboxd!

Shoutouts:

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.)

Blackberry)

Becoming Alien by Sarah Welch-Larson)

Follow Abby:

Twitter)

The Pitch)

Sojourners)

Think Christian writings that inspired her upcoming book)

Instagram )