The Wrestler

At work we often get miniature sized posters to give away to our customers. Typically we only put out the posters for movies we are actually playing, but when we got minis in for The Wrestler, I put them out anyway, because I wanted to promote the movie, even though I had not yet seen it. This kind of movie is, for the most part, lost on the general Woodland audience. This has been further confirmed by the youth of the town who see the mini posters and are trying to figure out which WWE superstar that is on the poster. How funny would it be if these kids ended up seeing the movie and got very confused as to what was going on. In fact, there is no John Cena, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan references to be found. There are real wrestlers in the movie, but they are has beens or never weres. People like K-Kwik and other low level guys who are cameoing it up in Darren Aronofsky's latest film.

Randy "The Ram" Robinson(Mickey Rourke) was quite a big deal as a wrestler in the 1980s. He was a super power. However, 20 years later, The Ram is no longer on top. He is still wrestling, but he is wrestling in high school gyms and small auditoriums. He gets paid in cash and often it is not the amount he hoped because the turn out was not big enough. He is the kind of guy who cannot make enough money to keep paying rent on the mobile home. He has hearing loss and scars all over his old and broken body due to the punishment of wrestling. The kids around his trailer love him, but he is all alone. His only "friend" is an aging stripper Cassidy(Marisa Tomei), but she still makes him pay for dances because she is as broken and tapped out as he is. After a brutal hardcore match, where he had staples shot into him and glass fragments jammed into his body, The Ram suffers a heart attack. His career is over. The thing he threw himself into, was being taken from him. He is all alone, but he does not want to die alone, so he tries to get back in touch with his daughter, Stephanie(Evan Rachel Wood). He was not a good father because wrestling was everything to him. He is trying to make it up to her, but he has beaten into her years of emotional scars and will not be let off the hook easily. He works the deli counter at a local grocery store and is wasting away, trying to feel anything at all. Unfortunately the only time he feels anything is in the ring and the opportunity for a re-match with his most heated rival from the 80s has come up. It will not take place at Madison Square Garden like their last match did, but it is something. The Ram is a wrestler. He bleeds, he lives and he breathes wrestling. He needs wrestling. he needs to know there are people out there who want him and want to cheer for him.

Much has been made of Mickey Rourke's performance and it is all deserved. Who knows what kind of movie this would have been if someone else had been The Ram. The story is small, slow and requires an acute attention to detail and there are long sequences where there is no dialog at all and the role requires so much pain and who knows the pain of recapturing glory the way Rourke does? Is he playing an extension of himself? Yes, of course he is, but to watch an actor leave it all on "mat" is quite a stunning thing to watch. Rourke is funny when he needs to be and infinitely charming, which is good because he is in every scene, but he will also break your heart in the final 30 minutes and he will melt your heart when he needs to. He is an incredible talent and this is the perfect vehicle for him to show what he is capable of doing. That being said, he is matched every second of the way by Marisa Tomei. Now, I do not know any 40 yr old strippers, but my guess is Marisa is prettier than most of them, but she is void of all vanity here as a woman desperate for something, anything good to happen to her. Tomei conveys so much in her body language, even when she is not writhing around the stage naked. She matches Rourke's hopelessness and his sadness and their scenes together are quite a study in subtle acting.

Aronofsky is an odd director. I find that people either love his movies or loathe them. However, he is a very visually aware director and his movies have this flare to them. Requiem of a dream and The Fountain are both excellent movies, but they would be less so if they weren't visually stunning with colors, lights, effects and camera tricks. The Wrestler is about as far away from that as possible. The movie was shot using mostly natural light and everything is minimalistic. The camera follows The Ram wherever he goes, and the camera work is so straight forward, it is almost a documentary. Gone are Aronosky's visual tics, replaced by a bobbing and weaving camera in the style of that handheld camera so common these days. It takes a good clean director's eye to make it work and Aronofsky has pulled off quite a feat. He is set to remake Robocop next, showing he is not afraid of tackling things so diverse. He deserves much of the credit for making this movie what it is. He never rushed a shot, never rushed a scene and he was confident that his audience would allow him to tell this story in a real way. It is nice to see a movie that is not so concerned with quick jump cuts. Only in the wrestling is there a lot in the way of editing.

As for the actual wrestling, it is fantastic looking. I remember watching Ali and thinking boxing could never be filmed better than it was in that movie. You felt every punch and felt every near punch. In The Wrestler, the wrestling scenes are so intimate they are suffocating. Audience members winced at every drop, every slap and every fall. People know the outcomes of matches are rigged and much of the action is "fake" but the bumps people take are real, especially if you are not making tons of money doing it and the wrestling in the movie feels real. I know real wrestlers choreographed it and The Ram's rival used to wrestle under the name "The Cat" in WCW and The WWE, and I know Mickey Rourke trained endlessly for the wrestling and it shows. It comes out a gritty, dirty ballet worthy of the title "action sequence." Of course, the wrestling is secondary in the movie, but it is not treated as such and it makes the climax that much more satisfying.

I will not give away the ending, but I just want to say that the final shot is perfect. Much is being made about what happens or what did or did not happen, but I think those people are missing the point. It is a perfect ending to a wonderful story. I am not sure I would call this the best movie of the year, but it is definitely in the conversation. It is hard not to feel something throughout The Wrestler. We feel for the stripper, for The Ram and mostly for the man playing The Ram.

Final Grade: A