Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man is an old-fashioned sort of
movie in many ways. It is both schmaltzy and dramatic in the way
that the movies of its period, the 1930s, so often were, yet
without (for the most part) the postmodern knowingness with which
Hollywood usually patronizes the past, including its own past,
these days. It tells the story of James J. Braddock (Russell
Crowe), the down-and-out Irish dockworker from New Jersey whose
seemingly miraculous victory in a heavyweight title fight in 1935
is presented as a moral parable, less Cinderella than David and
Goliath. Here is Hollywood doing what it does best — or at least
most often and most successfully — namely gratifying the
audience’s lust for the triumph of good over evil. Braddock is here
represented as an old-fashioned hero too: tough, modest but
undaunted by the great odds against him or the fearsome reputation
of his opponent, Max Baer (Craig Bierko), who has killed two men in
the ring. He is patient in adversity, honest, humorous, loving to
his wife, Mae (Renee Zellweger) and children and a moral straight
arrow, while Baer is represented as a braggart, a bully, and a
philanderer.
That the historical Max Baer was none of these things is neither
here not there. It’s just too bad that his reputation has had to be
sacrificed to enhance Braddock’s, but Hollywood parables, like
socialism according to the late dictator, Josef Stalin, are omelets
which cannot be made without the breaking of eggs. Moreover,
Braddock is the darling of Hollywood in another way too, for he is
the man who, so Mr. Howard tells us, gave hope to America in the
depths of the Depression. That is to say, he is the Cinderella Man
rather than Jack the Giant Killer because (I guess) he made people
believe that they too could be suddenly translated from being
hungry, broke, and unemployed to fame and riches overnight. A
politically minded filmmaker would not consider this to be any kind
of achievement on his part, but the Hollywood religion of
sentimentality trumps even politics.
I’m as much a sucker for sentiment as the next guy, and confess
to a little lift in my heart when the adorable Miss Zellweger says
to Braddock before the big fight: “Just remember who you are: the
Bulldog of Bergen, the Pride of Jersey, your kids’ hero and the
champion of my heart.” Yet I was disappointed that the film didn’t
do more justice to a heroism it leaves unexplained and unaccounted
for. For here, as in Tinseltown, the only people who really matter
are those at center stage: Braddock and his family, his various
opponents, his wife, his manager, Joe Gould (Paul Giamatti), and
Mr. Johnston (Bruce McGill), the sort-of villain who takes away
Braddock’s boxing license when he has fallen on hard times but
reluctantly allows him to return to the ring when persuaded by
Gould (“They oughta put your mouth in a circus,” he tells him). The
rest of the world is represented by one of Braddock’s fellow
dockworkers, Mike Wilson (Paddy Considine), who has been
radicalized by his sufferings and those of others in the Depression
and tries in an early scene to persuade him to “fight back.”
“Fight back?” he replies. “Against what? Bad luck?”
From this point we look ahead to Mike’s fatal entanglement in a
Hooverville protest in Central Park as well as to Braddock’s
explanation of why he’s prepared to risk a big loss, or even death,
in the ring: “At least I know who’s hitting me.” But for most
people in the Depression fighting back, in the political sense, and
knuckling under were not the only alternatives. They suffered, they
did not become radicalized, and they helped each other. It is this
social context, this network of support and community and sacrifice
that the film leaves out of account in its effort to make Braddock
as unique in his suffering as he is later in his victory. Here the
Hooverville men are as much political extras as the crowds in
Madison Square Garden are the extras in the life of Jim Braddock.
But the part of the world that does not center on him ought to be
here too, if only so that we can better understand Braddock
himself.
For instance, part of the movie’s hagiographical effort shows
him going to the unemployment relief agency as a last, desperate
measure. “I never thought I’d see you here,” says the woman behind
the counter, perhaps pityingly and perhaps also a little
disdainfully. Later when he wins a couple of fights, he returns the
money to the government. Likewise, when he begs at the posh
Manhattan club where fight managers congregate, he says to them:
“You know me well enough to know that if I had anywhere else to go,
I wouldn’t be here.” When his son steals a sausage from the
butcher, Braddock makes him take it back, insisting “We don’t
steal” and that the family will stay together in spite of their
poverty. Yet, really, Braddock’s virtues were not all that
extraordinary. Lots of people felt the shame of applying for relief
— lots never did it, no matter how much they suffered as a result
— or begging among those whom they once treated as equals. Lots of
families stuck together in spite of tremendous strains.
What lay behind Braddock’s heroism? The pride of the working man
in being self-supporting was not a virtue unique to James J.
Braddock but a part of the social capital in the milieu out of
which he sprang. Enjoyable as the film is as an account of
individual heroism, a really skillful filmmaker might have
portrayed this social milieu, this working-class culture of
stoicism and self-reliance, as being almost as interesting as
Braddock the celebrity with the Cinderella backstory — which is
naturally all that Hollywood is really interested in. But unlike
Braddock’s fans and admirers met together in the local church to
pray for him back in the 1930s, we no longer expect to see any
miracles outside the movies themselves.
