Real Steel (2011 film): Shadow Boxing, Shadow Dancing, and Joy

This film was 2011, but I probably didn't jot down that I wanted to do a post until like 2013 I'm guessing, even though I saw it in the theater in 2011. It's not a long post, just a couple things that I really liked and thought should be showcased as artistic. I liked the movie overall a lot, but then I tend to like Hugh Jackman, and I liked Envangeline Lily from her performance in Lost. Other general things are that I thought the film created and gave texture to the whole bot-boxing world well, and I loved the song "All My Days" by Alexi Murdoch and how it was used at the beginning of the film ... had a total feel to it.

So, now to the two things I thought made it stronger artistically.

Thing 1

In an extra on the DVD I think, the director mentions what he calls the "trifecta": the father, and the boy, and the robot. All three are beaten up and worn down, and the father has some sins to pay for. And they go through some kind of redemption. It's not pretty, but it's there. The father has to admit actually to the boy that he was a major ass for not fighting for him, but he does and they connect etc.

What I thought was artistic was the way they connected the father and son through the robot, and I don't mean primarily in it being the project they work on together. I mean that they each have something they do involving Atom's (the robot's) shadow mode. After the father sees the boy accidentally/goofing around making Atom dance, the father makes the boy use it as a performance hook at matches they get, so everybody sees the shadow dancing. At first, the father's shadow boxing with the bot is only private training, but when the voice recognition software breaks in the final match against Zeus, he has to do the shadow boxing as actually how they really have Atom battle Zeus. So both father and son sort of find some progress or redemption through their connection to Atom's shadow mode. The boy, I think, learns to get out beyond and stretch his wings and be confident (he says no to the idea until Jackman tells him that it makes or breaks the deal), maybe a few other things along those lines. What the father gets is a bit of redemption and rebirth, not just in the relationship with his son, but in the whole of what he is doing in lifer, his work ... boxing. And that is what thing 2 is.

Thing 2

What I love is that when Jackman is in that moment of shadow boxing in the final match with Zeus, he is smiling. You obviously have to suspend some disbelief about Atom the bot being able read Jackson's movements in order to mimic them while hunkered down in a hold-out position. But you suspend it because the payoff is so good. Jackson is not just smiling ... there is a certain joy in him from doing something that he is good at, and not just good in the way somebody does a job thoroughly, but in the way that is almost art or poetry in motion. It's easier to convey what I am talking about with boxing because Ali was well known in this way for having a certain poetry in motion in the "float like a butterfly" part of his famous "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." Jackson is in that kind of moment, and he is laughing and smiling and taking a simple but deep joy in it. There's an exhilaration in doing something you have a talent for, a connection with, something you do not by "knowledge" in the "facts" sense of the word, but in the experience sense, in the "feel" sense. And after the way he has messed things up over the years, having that moment is a bit of redemption.

That is where Evangeline Lily's character comes in. When she is at that last match watching him and smiling, it is not because they might beat Zeus. Her smile comes right in conjunction with a slo-mo bit of him in that moment of enjoyment of doing his skill well, that exhilaration. The slo-mo shot makes sure you can't miss that look on his face, and the smile on her face is at seeing him be happy like that and seeing him in that moment of poetry in motion, of skill.

It's not necessarily "high" art. But it is solid art as having a good human thematic core about working to patch up our relationships that have gotten hurt along the way and about a certain mystical beauty in watching somebody do something in which they take a certain joy simply because they are good at it, because they have a "feel" for it that they have developed and honed. The dialog and the camera-work and the pacing and all that (what I have before called the techne and the scientia) are at the very least adequate ... what makes it a good film that I enjoy a lot (in addition to endearing characters and created sub-world) is the matter of the themes, the sapientia, the "wisdom."