Martin Scorsese on the Driving Idea Behind "Raging Bull"

Martin Scorsese: Don’t forget this man’s job is basically to go to work in the morning and go to the ring and get beaten up and beat up other people and then come home. In a sense he’s a metaphor for all of us and psychological and emotional plumbing that we take in our lives and he eventually becomes so negative the character that he cuts off everyone around him, including himself, until finally at the end he goes to his own redemption and is able to get at least one moment of peace in his life where he’s at peace with himself when he’s in front of the mirror. It doesn’t matter what he’s reciting. It’s the matter of being at peace with one’s self. That was the idea that we were trying to get at.