The Wrestler

The Wrestler marks the triumphant return of both its lead actor, Mickey Rourke, and its director, Darren Aronofsky. Rourke, whose skills as an actor have gradually been forgotten due to bad film choices and reckless personal behavior, here once again proves how talented he really is, and how deep he is able to go when given the right part. His incredibly moving and layered performance anchors this powerful drama, which ranks as one of the year’s best films.

In the film Rourke plays Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a big-time wrestler from the 80s who, twenty years later, still appears in low-level venues further destroying his body with fights that net him less and less money. As Randy travels this circuit, you certainly see the sadness of his circumstances, but also the glory and excitement he still gets from the devoted crowds that know and love him. When the physical toll of all this brutality finally becomes too much, Randy suffers a heart attack, and he is given strict instructions that he must stop fighting immediately and forever in order to stay alive.

Faced with losing the one thing that gives his life meaning, Randy tries as best he can to cope with the situation by pursuing other things, most notably a developing relationship with a local stripper, Cassidy (poignantly played by Marisa Tomei), and a reconnection with his estranged, angry daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood). In order to pay the bills, he also must take on more hours at the supermarket where he works part-time, which starts to include a weekend gig at the deli counter—scenes that provide the film with some of its more sadly humorous moments. In the end, while certain elements of the story can feel a little contrived, the emotional honesty and depth that Rourke and Aronofsky bring to the material make up for it, and they create an overall experience that feels genuine and genuinely rewarding.

Like all really good filmmakers, Aronofsky understands that he has to take care of the small things in order for the big things to come through. Working with a script by Robert Siegel, Aronofsky perfectly captures all the intricate details of these people and their specific, at times heartbreaking world. The settings—from the run-down schools and community centers where the fights take place, to the trailer park where Randy lives, to the seedy strip club where Cassidy dances—are all rendered in painstaking detail, giving the film the kind of authenticity that most Hollywood directors would never dare approach. The characters are very well drawn and grow and change believably—again, this is not a glossed-over depiction of poor, struggling people and their problems, but a look at how real people behave and act.

The fight scenes are also incredibly brutal and realistic—Aronofsky is never one to shy away from the ugly details of life, and in these moments he makes the audience feel the excruciating pain and trauma of Randy’s chosen vocation. These are among the more harrowing scenes to watch in any movie I have seen recently, but they effectively achieve their purpose, which is to communicate what this world is really like and to make you understand what “The Ram” must constantly endure. All of this realism is well captured by Maryse Alberti’s exquisite cinematography, which has the perfect grainy, rough feel for this film.

In these specific details, Aronofsky finds a story with bigger themes—themes of love, family, redemption, failure, and, perhaps most basically, what matters in life, and how and why certain choices are made. While some of this is perhaps too explicitly spelled out in dialogue near the film’s conclusion, I think that Aronofsky achieves these goals honestly, by making you really care about and believe in the people you are watching. As a filmmaker, he has suffered his own career setbacks—he started out very promisingly with the now-seminal indie films Pi and Requiem for a Dream, but then spent years on The Fountain, an incredibly ambitious picture that faced many problems through its long and expensive production process, and ultimately was a big commercial failure. It’s nice to see him working in a more scaled-down mode and creating something much more successful. His ideas and his talent haven’t gotten any smaller, just his focus, and his vision combined, with Rourke’s standout work, make this film a definite must-see.

                                                               David Laub