 Like no other filmmaker, I've always felt that Clint Eastwood's work is connected. Perhaps this comes from his on-screen career, or his tendency to work with the same writers, cinematographers, and editors film after film. But I feel like above all else, Eastwood has drawn to stories about redemption, and I feel like this idea shines through the brightest and million dollar baby and grand terino. And after watching both films back to back, I noticed many parallels within their stories, characters, structures, and most importantly, their themes. And today, I would like to examine these two films and look at how they tell their stories of redemption, the similarities and the differences in what we can learn about these films and apply to Eastwood's career as a whole. The first thing that's worth pointing out about redemption story arcs is that they traditionally exist within villains. The redemption in these two films, however, is not traditional, because not only is their redemption not of a villain, it's of our protagonists, Walt and Frankie. And their redemption arc comes in five stages, and although there are significant differences between the two films, examining the structure of the two films will help reveal how Clint Eastwood's favorite story of redemption is told. It starts off with a state of existence, and this begins before the entire movie does, essentially what happened in these characters' lives before the film started rolling, what shaped them to be who they are. And although they live very different lives, there is one connecting thread, and that's prejudice, a bias that he developed based on information that we will later learn about. In Gran Turino, Walt is prejudiced against Koreans. His time in the war mixed with his own bias beliefs turned him into a racist. He believes things should be done one way, and refuses to accept anything different. And this limited perspective on life makes him unhappy. His recently deceased wife was the one thing in his life that meant anything to him, and now he does everything he can to try and remember that part of his life. His car is the embodiment of the memory of her, and that's all that he has left. Frankie on the other hand refuses to train women. His prejudice comes not from a place of hatred, but from love. He already lost his daughter. The film doesn't tell us why, but the two are estranged, very likely because of how much time he spent training fighters, instead of spending time with her. He sees his daughter in Maggie, and refuses to train her, knowing that he could lose her. Boxing is a violent sport, and doesn't want to put her into a dangerous situation like he did with Scrap. Regardless of why the bias is there, it's still there, and it's a personal flaw of his in the film that will show him overcoming. This ultimately starts to change through forced contact. A Korean family moves in next door to Walt, and he is exposed to their culture. The violent nature of his neighborhood leads to conflict, and his desire to be a hero outweighs his own bias. He begins to spend time with, and enjoys their company. They begin to fill a hole in his life, a hole that his family only made bigger. There will be a little bit more on that later. Due to circumstances out of his hand, he is exposed to the culture that he was biased against, and finds out that many of his misconceptions weren't just that, they were wrong. Frankie's exposure towards Maggie comes through Scrap. He sees himself in her, he sees dedication and a desire to win, and the knowledge that she will push herself as far as she needs to go to win. Scrap sees this in her first, and begins teaching her the basics of fighting, and gives her the opportunity to be noticed by Frankie, who admires her dedication. She is training when he is watching, and when he isn't. Through this forced exposure, Frankie sees what she is made of, and knows how far she will push herself to succeed, and he decides to train her. It's worth mentioning that both characters are drawn to the same attribute, hard work. Maggie works as hard as she can to be the best that she can, and Tao works to repay his debt to Walt, but through this, Eastwood's two characters are drawn to their dedication. They both see themselves in both Maggie and Tao. The two eventually come to appreciate the time spent with Tao and Maggie, and ultimately find a love. Walt acts as a positive force in Tao's life, showing him to stand up for himself and to not let others walk all over him. He is a source of stability in Tao's life, and in turn finds stability within his own life. He now no longer obsesses over the intangible car. He has something in his life that means something. For the first time since his wife died, he found people with whom he can't connect. Frankie on the other hand already knew about Maggie's work ethic, and she begins to fill the hole in his life, the lack of family. The two of respect for one another and through working together are able to achieve something neither of them were able to do in the past. Maggie came from nothing the mere act of achieving anything is more than she ever had. Other truth is, my brother's in prison. My sister cheats on welfare by pretending one of her babies is still alive. My dad is dead and my mama weighs 312 pounds. And Walt had enough faith in her to take her to the highest level of competition. They find enlightenment through one another. In both films, the characters given families are not there, whereas the ones that they choose are able to support them. I think that this is Eastwood telling us that in order to live a meaningful life, you need to surround yourself with those who you care for, and those who care for you. The fourth stage of their redemption arcs is tragedy. The mere act of spending time with one another isn't enough to fully redeem the characters. They need to be faced with choice and the forces of antagonism and adversity head on. It's worth noting that the means of tragedy are very different from one film to another. Gran Torino sees a slow escalation, Tau's cousins increase their violence going past violence and towards life-threatening behavior, while a million dollar baby sees a sucker punch paralyze Maggie. And both of these events are either latently or directed affected by both Walt and Frankie, obviously unintentional, but still happen because of them. Tau's cousins escalated their behavior because Walt and Tau spent time together while Maggie's hit came because Frankie got her into the fight. Of course along with the tragedy comes everything else that they have gotten from the two men. Tau took his work ethic and focused it on improving his life, finding work and making something of himself, while Maggie on the other hand lived her dream, did what she knew she was good at, and made something of herself. The tragedy was out of the hands of the two figures, but now that the two situations are at their worst comes the final aspect. Redemption comes from making the right decision. Both men have a history of making poor decisions when faced with adversity, but their time spent with Tau and Maggie taught them as much about themselves as they learned about others. They realized that they weren't as good of people as they thought they were, and now that they only have one shot left, they need to make the decision that is right. Frankie puts Maggie out of her suffering, bringing relief to her but leaving him with pain. She earned her legacy. Meanwhile Walt sacrifices himself to protect Tau. To stop the violence once and for all, he needs to bring the violence to levels that it has never reached before, and let law enforcement clean up the streets. He allows himself to fall so that Tau can live the life that he will find most fulfilling, and in both of these cases the two men allow pain for themselves for the betterment of others. Both characters exit the story as better men than when they entered. No matter where he is, I thought you should know what kind of man your father really was. Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed. I don't want to speculate too much about to which extent Eastwood's films are about his own life and his own experiences. He very rarely discusses his own work and when he does, he likes to focus on the technical side of filmmaking, so whether these films are autobiographical or not, I can't say. But I can say that this is a story to which he is drawn. I definitely could have included Unforgiven in the discussion and would have met much of the same criteria, but I'm saving that for another day. In the meantime, I want to hear your thoughts and your perspective on Eastwood's homography. He's made a lot of it, so please hold your discussion and let me know what your favorite film of his is. If you would like to help support the channel, there's a link to my Patreon on Spree Now, and right next to it is my last video on Inception, which I looked at the meaning behind dreams. Check that out if you're interested and thank you for watching.