In an about face from his previous film, 2006’s fantastical, contemplative The Fountain, director Darren Aronofsky returns with an earnest, down-to-earth story about the hardships of a professional wrestler. The result is delightful.
Shot largely with hand-held cameras and appropriating the feel of a documentary exposé, The Wrestler stars Mickey Rourke as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a faded professional wrestler 20 years past his prime.
After a heart attack threatens to end his career and his embittered daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) rebuffs his attempts at reconciliation and atonement for having been an absentee father, Randy finds himself
The Wrestler  Directed by Darren Aronofsky Starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood |
adrift. His only kindred spirit is Pam (Marisa Tomei), who works at a strip club under the name “Cassidy.”
But a stage name is not the only thing they have in common: Pam is the oldest stripper at her establishment, and her appeal with the clientele is waning – like Randy, she is a fading star. When the opportunity arises for a comeback by means of a 20-year rematch against one of his title opponents, “The Ram” is forced to choose between the ring and the real world, with his health hanging in the balance.
Rourke carries the film on his impressively muscled shoulders with a performance that has already been honoured as the best of 2008 by the BAFTA awards and the Golden Globes.
Likely drawing on real life experience as a professional boxer, Rourke convincingly exhibits the physical and mental toll taken by professional sports (extending from boxing, wrestling, and the ever-popular UFC all the way to big-league football and ice hockey).
Aronofsky holds back from showing a close-up of Randy’s face for the first few scenes, so that when it does come, it is an almost gruesome surprise: the hearing aid was always visible, but Randy’s race is a network of scars and pockmarks (nearly as craggy and forbidding as the visage of Marv, Rourke’s burly, violent character in Sin City).
Marisa Tomei is similarly commendable as the conflicted, guarded, but sympathetic Pam; however, Evan Rachel Wood chews the scenery a bit as Randy’s daughter, Stephanie, eschewing any hint of subtlety in donning the persona of a rancorous teen.
It is a story told unflinchingly but with tenderness. The narrative assumes a beguilingly simple, linear, day-in-the-life quality, only to cut poetically between Randy’s calm deliberations with his opponent before a match (“Are you cool with staples?” “Whaddaya mean?” “A staple gun.”) and the bloody duel itself (which makes use of barbed wire, broken glass, and other accessories in addition to the staple gun).
While it received no mention in the Academy Awards’ film-making categories (Best Picture, Best Director, etc.), The Wrestler is a serious competitor for two major acting awards: Rourke seems a shoo-in for Best Actor after his previous awards recognition, and Marisa Tomei will have earned her Best Supporting Actress award should she win it.
The most grievous snub of all, however, involves a track (aptly titled “The Wrestler”) composed specially for the film by Bruce Springsteen; after 90 minutes of head-banging classic rock and an understated score by longtime Aronofsky collaborator Clint Mansell, Springsteen’s soulful acoustic ode is a fitting capstone to a story which is both emotional and dramatic—but never maudlin or overwrought.
As ever, life imitates art. With a critically acclaimed performance under his belt and a spate of future projects lined up (including a Bret Easton Ellis adaptation), Mickey Rourke, who hasn’t been a hot Hollywood commodity since the 1980s, seems poised to make a “Ram”-style comeback.