January 28, 2009: The Wrestler
Every awards season has one or two juggernaut movies, labours of love by filmmakers and their actors, which somehow manage to rise above obscurity and become talked about at water-coolers everywhere. The Wrestler was such an example this year, and the back story of how this movie came to be, and what it’s done for its participants, is even more dramatic than what happens in the movie itself. I don’t know how many people actually bothered to go out and see it, but either way people were talking about it.
The Wrestler paints a portrait of a broken, aimless man (Randy “The Ram” Robinson, played by Mickey Rourke) who is coming to terms with the price he paid for letting his professional wrestling success outweigh his personal life. Popular in the 1980s (an obvious composite of such players as “Rowdy” Roddy Piper or “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan – yes, I grew up watching Saturday Night’s Main Event as Saturday Night Live was occasionally pre-empted for an hour and a half of professional wrestling), he now works the third-rate wrestling circuit and sells his merchandise at nostalgia fan shows. He tries to make amends with his long-estranged daughter but still doesn’t quite have what it takes to play a stable role in her life. He explores the possibility of something more than a “professional” relationship with a borderline over-the-hill stripper (Marisa Tomei, who, while she has the acting chops to take on the part, definitely doesn’t strike me as looking over-the-hill) at the local sleazy peeler joint, with mixed success. By the end of the film, Randy has examined his life, and realizes where he fits into the world, and accepts that.
These intertwined threads in Randy’s life go through wild ups-and-downs throughout the movie, generally driven by his mood and temper swinging from one extreme to another. The strange mix of hope and despair on which the movie ends is a testament to the courage of director Darren Aronofsky to break from Hollywood convention and consider more closely what might actually happen in real life. Mind you, Aronofsky is no stranger to breaking from convention, with the impenetrable Pi (1998), the horrific and controversial Requiem for a Dream (2000), and more recently the beautiful but incomprehensible The Fountain (2006). I count myself as a fan despite the fact that I know I don’t “get it” when I’m watching his movies. His work strikes me as being like what David Fincher’s output might look like if Fincher were a shade brighter in his tone and considerably more willing to depart from traditional narratives. This is among the more narratively conventional Aronofsky films, but we can see the chaos beneath the surface, ever so thinly veiled.
This is a great character study – that’s all it tries to be, and I think it succeeds wildly. Some viewers may have difficulty with the presentation, since there are some intense wrestling scenes including one or two particularly violent and degrading matches in the wrestling underworld as Randy hits his rock bottom, which make hitting people over the head with folding chairs seem cartoonish and painless. But if you can take what the movie throws at you, it is gripping throughout, and comes to a satisfying and perhaps counter-intuitive conclusion.
The big story around this movie, of course, is the career resurrection of Mickey Rourke. I had most recently seen (and barely recognized) him in Stormbreaker, but he’s been languishing for the better part of two decades since his heyday in the mid-1980s playing rebellious sex symbols. Here he gives his all, and gets a well-deserved Oscar nomination for laying everything out for all to see. He illustrates the little-acknowledged performance aspects of wrestling, such as bleaching his hair at home and going to tanning salons to keep his bronzed look, which is a courageous “behind the curtain” approach that not all actors are willing to take. Rourke ultimately lost the Oscar contest to Sean Penn’s more conventional portrayal of the doomed Harvey Milk, a decision I haven’t yet quite brought myself to analyze since I wasn’t totally sold on the idea of Rourke winning, and didn’t think Penn needed to win again, but the other three entries might not have sat right with me either. Anyway, I hope the momentum of this role propels Rourke into a revival, and that he can keep his famously difficult temper under control during future film productions.
Gripping character study, intense but rewarding.
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