Last Sunday evening on Mother’s Day, I went to the cinema in Kortrijk to see Million Dollar Baby. I knew from the oscars and from imdb.com that it was supposed to be a good movie. It won oscars for Best Picture, Best Actress (Hilary Swank), Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman) and Best Director (Clint Eastwood). On imdb.com it has a rating of 8.3,, thereby sitting in the top #100 all-time.

But it turned out to be a lot better than that… If I would have to rank all movies I’ve seen according to how deep an impression they made on me, this one would definitely be in the top 3 or 5. For at least half an hour after we got out of the cinema, I was barely approachable.

The reason? Tears had been rolling down my cheeks after the movie, not just one, but several. Now you’re probably wondering why I would be crying over a movie. Well, it wasn’t the first time I cried over a movie, but still… I wasn’t crying out of sympathy or pity or whatever for one of the characters, I cried because it confronted me with my own life. It forced me to look into the mirror, Tijl Uilenspiegel, the medieval Flemish character after which I was named, enjoyed showing to his fellow-villagers, to confront them with their weaknesses and problems.

Million Dollar Baby is about a boxing instructor (Clint Eastwood) who has lost contact with his daughter because he has hurt her in some way. He writes her every week, but every letter is sent back unopened. He tries to make up for this loss by training a female boxer (Hilary Swank), but not everything goes as he would have wanted it. The whole movie is in a way set up as being a letter for his daughter, although not written by himself, but by one of his dear friends (Morgan Freeman) who narrates the movie.

While the credits were rolling down the screen, two sentences kept wailing through my head… “I don’t want this to happen to me.” and “I want to know my father.”

I wouldn’t want somebody to write me a letter about who my dad really was, because we had never gotten along very well…

Million Dollar Baby is not a movie that will cheer you up. When the credits started rolling and the lights turned on, it was unimaginably quiet in the theater. It’s a movie that will make a deep impression on you…

And that’s the kind of movies that I love…