There are many ways one can create a biopic, but it’s the ones that do more than just retell the story that we remember. Lawrence of Arabia examines only a short time within the life of T.E. Lawrence, and examines the portrayal of the legend against the real man. Just released this year, Todd Haynes took Bob Dylan’s life and flipped it upside down with six actors portraying the man in I’m Not There. But there is something quintessentially different from every other biopic in Raging Bull. What makes Raging Bull so much more powerful than any other biopic is that the film drives in the human psychology of a man who is seen as so overcome by the violent world he lives in. Jake La Motta is a product of our environment, and his faults are the faults of the world.

Directed by Martin Scorsese in 1980, Raging Bull is widely regarded as the best movie made since the end of the Golden Age of the 70s. Written by Paul Schrader, who also wrote Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, the film tells the story of boxer Jake La Motta. La Motta is played by Robert De Niro, in one of the most frightening portrayals of a real man ever to be captured on celluloid. De Niro did extensive training for the boxing scenes, but then famously gained a then record breaking 60 pounds of weight to play the older La Motta. But even though the physical transformation is widely remembered, it is much more about how De Niro portrays the violence within La Motta that makes this film such a compelling piece of work. With this powerful performance, and Scorsese directing the film with the same brutal force that La Motta brought to the ring, Raging Bull can only be described as a haunting portrayal of one of the most psychologically vulnerable characters in film.

Part of the brilliance of Raging Bull is the story structure that Schrader uses. We never see La Motta’s childhood or his entrance into boxing. After a small opening scene from his later years, we are immediately pulled back into one of his first fights with “Sugar Ray” Robinson. We follow is way up to the title, and his relationship with his wife and brother. But once we reach the title, Schrader does something unexpected. We don’t get title cards telling us how La Motta would later lose the title. Instead we follow his tragic downfall, viewing how pathetic of a character he becomes through pitiful moments, when all he dreams of his getting back in that ring.

There are two main influences that shape the La Motta character. First, he is bred in a culture of violence. As a boxer, La Motta is always around some sort of violence. When others run away from punches, he goes in for them. When he should use reasoning, his first reaction in the primeval instinct to throw a fist. Take one of the early sequences when Jake and his first wife are arguing. When words no longer work for Jake he flips the table over. When his brother Joey, played brilliantly by Joe Pesci, arrives, his reaction is casual. La Motta can’t function outside violence; he is designed to destroy.

The other large influence that he learns through boxing is that he can have whatever he desires, an American dream of some sorts. La Motta should get what he wants, and just has to take it for the grabbing, just like he does in boxing. The first few interactions between Jake and who becomes his second wife Vicky, played by Cathy Moriaty, really demonstrate this view. One of the first point of view shots of Vicky from Jake are of her long legs. When he talks to her, he is less is conversation than demanding things of her. She is completely objectified by La Motta: he wants her, and he can have her.

There are so many scenes where we are let into the psyche of Jake and his incomprehensible nature with others. There’s a scene where Vicky mentions to Jake that his next fighter is somewhat of a cute guy. Jake becomes immediately upset, and when he fights him, he completely demolishes his face. The next shot shows the reaction of Cathy, followed by Jake starring at her with a huge grin upon his face. Jake will not have his wife have possible sexual flirtation with anyone else on the face of the Earth.

But the problems persist throughout. We even seen Joey affected by the large amount of violence he is exposed to. When he finds Vicky out with another man, he does his first natural instinct: he beats him to a living pulp, smashing his head in a car door repeatedly. But Joey learns and grows, apologizing for his actions. Jake can do no such thing: he is designed to work solely on his instincts, and those are always right. That’s why later in an important phone call, Jake can’t seem to bring himself to say anything because he doesn’t know how to apologize. When he gets a sudden hint about the possibility that his brother may have had an affair with his wife, he pulverizes both, as that’s the only response he knows. He mocks his opponent, who has just completely wrecked his face after a fight, taking pride that he “never went down.” Jake is such a stubborn man who refuses to lose anything he wants.

What remains so devastating in Raging Bull is the film’s look at Jake in later life. He is older, fat, divorced from his wife, and doing nothing. His stand up comedy routines at a bar he owns are his only chance in the light again. But this is not what he wants; he needs back in the ring. In a key sequence when La Motta spends a night in prison, he bangs his head and fists against the wall asking “Why.” Jake is almost completely shrouded in darkness, the shadows encompassing his lost soul.

And even during the film’s final scene, we still get that Jake will never leave the violent culture. He repeats Marlon Brando’s famous monologue, citing “coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am.”  We feel for La Motta because it is a reflection of his life. He could have been so much more than he was, but his psychology drove him. And then in the final moment, just before he goes on stage, he goes back to his fighting training, while Scorsese lingers the camera on the mirror. La Motta’s violence, anger, and instincts are a reflection of American violence.

Scorsese and director of photography Michael Chapman decided to film in glorious black and white. Not only does this make it easier on the viewer for the boxing scenes, as blood literally sprays everywhere, but it does something else: it makes the film an expressionist outlook of La Motta. The film looks like what many of the TV boxing matches would look like, and this reflects how La Motta is brought up in such a culture. He sees everything through the boxing lens, and that’s why he reacts that way.

The fight scenes in the film are impeccably amazing. Unlike Rocky, which glorified Stalone’s rise and fight, Raging Bull captures the sheer brutality. Simply listen to the sound design: Scorsese adds animal sounds during the fights, highlighting their primitive instincts, and shuts sounds on and off at appropriate moments so we feel like we are Jake. Instead of shooting from outside, Scorsese brings his camera inside the ring and shows all the sweat and blood flowing between the two fighters. There’s a surrealism that is hard to ignore throughout the fights, which are brilliantly executed. And each shot leaves us understand more about why La Motta is so influenced outside the ring by what happens within. Recall the shot right after Jake has been completely annihilated by an opponent. We cut back to the rope he was on, and see it dripping with his blood.

And who could ever forget Mr. De Niro, who brings La Motta to life. His performance truly captures the psychological torment within the man. His stares are enough to frightened anyone sometimes and his moments of personal pain shown his vulnerability. The weight he put on for the later segment of the film shows his commitment to the character. De Niro is always citied as one of the greatest actors of his generation, and Raging Bull is easily his most complex performance, which he deservedly won an Oscar for. De Niro truly inhabits the violence that La Motta brought to his entire life.

Martin Scorsese could have glorified La Motta, and even kept some of his marital problems too. But Raging Bull was never a boxing movie to begin with than a deep character study of a man that was vulnerable to violence’s impact in his life. Raging Bull is a movie that will stay with you for years. The sheer brutality of the film is seen through Jake both inside and outside the ring. Today’s violent culture in America is much worse than it was in Jake’s time, or even when Scorsese made this film. And it’s sometimes scary to think there are people like La Motta who are just as easily taken in by the culture.