New on DVD Jan 13 2009 @ 11:13 pm
REVIEW: The Wrestler
Directed By: Darren Aronofsky
Written By: Robert D. Siegel
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood
Running Time: 115 minutes
Rated R for violence, sexuality/nudity, language and some drug use.
A few moments before I sat down to watch Darren Aronofsky’s new film The Wrestler, I was overcome with prejudice and apprehension culminating in a simple question: “Could someone actually make a worthwhile film about wrestling?” Call me shallow (you may be right), label me a snob (point taken), but despite all the buzz I’d heard, I wasn’t ready to be impressed.
I should’ve thought twice because The Wrestler is a beautiful and simple story about a sad (yet empathetic) character. There’s plenty of grit, of course, but there’s more quiet power in this film than in any of 2008’s big Awards Season picks. And given Mickey Rourke’s spectacular comeback performance, it should easily win audience approval as well as critical accolades.
Mickey Rourke as Randy The Ram
Rourke plays Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a big-time professional wrestling star during the 80s who, as the opening credits show, had manifold successes and a nice amount of money to play with. But that’s all in the past. Randy is a has-been now – a muscle-bound second-rate athlete writhing under the weight of past successes. He’s now moonlighting at highly staged wrestling matches in high school gymnasiums and spends evenings relaxing at a local strip joint. There’s little money to be had and his landlord has locked him out of his trailerpark home. He’s a scarred man, highly medicated, dirt poor, and miserable.
After participating in an unruly match involving a staple gun and barbed wire, Randy, exhausted, goes backstage to his locker and has a near-fatal heart attack. He’s rushed to the hospital and his doctor later alerts him that his body can no longer withstand the abuse that comes hand-in-hand with his profession. “Hell, I’m a professional wrestler!”, Randy says. The doctor’s response: “That’s not a good idea.”
Tomei as Cassidy
With wrestling behind him for a while, Randy tries his best to establish relationship with a sympathetic stripper named Cassidy. “I can’t leave with customers”, she says, but soon enough she begins to see that Randy’s current needs aren’t sexual and that his world is just as painful and fake as hers. A flicker of romance? Perhaps, but Cassidy is most helpful in helping Randy try to repair a bitter relationship with his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) who has been estranged from him for years.
Randy “The Ram” is one of the most sympathetic movie characters is recent memory mostly because Aronofosky doesn’t deny his audience any chance of getting to know Randy intimately. Direction aside, there are many moments completely dependent on Mickey Rourke’s acting ability and The Wrestler is a compelling one-man show for him. This is his movie and he deserves every bit of praise he’s been getting. There’s a world of emotion flowing through Randy’s broken body and it’s just as easy to cringe in pain with him as he intentionally slices his face at a match as it is to smile and laugh when he’s relegated to scooping potato salad at a grocery store deli counter for extra cash.
Both Robert D. Siegel’s screenplay and Aronofsky’s direction are restrained and minimalist. The script is quick and caring, but offers plenty of room for improvisation. The brutal wrestling matches never feel like they’ve been staged for the purposes of the film. The sound design is remarkable as well, often turning our attention to the pulsating ring of Randy’s hearing aid or the sounds of a screaming crowd echoing in the most unlikely of situations.
Indeed, Aronofsky’s direction is seamless and near perfect. He has become all but invisible behind the camera for the purposes of this film and there is rarely a scene where he shows too much, lingers too long, or overstates a point. The Wrestler may lack the ambitious goals of his previous films (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain), but this is a smaller picture – the simple story of a man who has destroyed himself in so many ways for so long that he finally decides to search for redemption. In Aronofsky’s hands, it’s undeniably fresh, too.
Aronofsky directs Rourke
There’s a really transcendent moment when the final image of the film moves like clockwork into the words of Bruce Springsteen’s song “The Wrestler”, written specifically for the film. Springsteen has channeled the themes of the film so well with his lyrics that it’s as if the song is an extension of Siegel’s screenplay. “Have you ever seen a scarecrow filled with nothing but dust and wheat? / If you’ve ever seen that scarecrow then you’ve seen me.” Springsteen’s is the best summation one could possibly give of Randy “The Ram” and his song makes the film feel complete.
Come the end, we leave Randy when he’s at his apex – at the place where he belongs and has found a home. Whether this is the best place for him to be is unsaid, but the empathy felt for his character is something rare. We’ve examined and felt his wounds, learning that the ones that hurt the most are rarely physically wounded. We care about his life and his future. Where both of those will lead after the credits roll is anyone’s guess.
on Jan 14 2009 @ 5:27 am 1. Luke Harrington said …
“Could someone actually make a worthwhile film about wrestling?”
What, no love for Nacho Libre?
I really want to see this film, and this piece did nothing to alleviate that. Grr. Nicely done.
on Jan 15 2009 @ 3:51 pm 2. Andrew Wyatt said …
This film really grew on me. I was impressed, but not blown away, by “The Wrestler” when I walked out, but after a month to ruminate on it, I gave it my highest rating. It’s Rourke’s film from beginning to end, but I’m also enamored with Aronofsky’s ability to touch upon his favored themes within this seemingly incongruous story, and with the director’s developing sensitivity to emotional subtleties, which prevents the film from descending into the white-trash goggling it might have been in other hands.
Springsteen was really an on-the-nose choice for this film; his blue-collar, jagged melancholy suits its tone. The story and the boardwalk scenes in particular instantly brought to mind his “Atlantic City”.
My review:
http://gatewaycinephiles.com/2008/12/26/fake-but-accurate/
on Jan 18 2009 @ 11:56 am 3. Sam Juliano said …
“There’s a really transcendent moment when the final image of the film moves like clockwork into the words of Bruce Springsteen’s song “The Wrestler”, written specifically for the film. Springsteen has channeled the themes of the film so well with his lyrics that it’s as if the song is an extension of Siegel’s screenplay. “Have you ever seen a scarecrow filled with nothing but dust and wheat? / If you’ve ever seen that scarecrow then you’ve seen me.” Springsteen’s is the best summation one could possibly give of Randy “The Ram” and his song makes the film feel complete.”
Superlative observation there Phillip, and another great review by you for Movie Zeal. I quite agree with your four-and-a-half star rating, and although it didn’t quite make my Top Ten list (due to acute competition) it is nonetheless in my view one of the year’s best films. I don’t have any issues with the film except maybe that the “crying scene” could have used a bit of exposition, but I’ll admit that Ram did not affect me emotionally for all the character’s fascinations and Rourke’s extraordinary performance. (two points you bring out in your essay) The film’s minimalism is raw and precise, and some of the scenes (like the ones with the staple gun) are sometimes impossible to look at.
“Indeed, Aronofsky’s direction is seamless and near perfect. He has become all but invisible behind the camera for the purposes of this film and there is rarely a scene where he shows too much, lingers too long, or overstates a point. The Wrestler may lack the ambitious goals of his previous films (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain), but this is a smaller picture – the simple story of a man who has destroyed himself in so many ways for so long that he finally decides to search for redemption. In Aronofsky’s hands, it’s undeniably fresh, too.”
This is another paragraph in your review that seems dead-on in every way. We may well be seeing Rourke win an Oscar for this uncompromising portrayal.
My favorite scene: the one at the deli when the woman keeps telling him to “add” and “remove” from a counter order, and his way of settling.
THE FOUNTAIN remains Aronofsky’s masterpiece, but this one is another triumph for the visionary helmer.
on Jan 19 2009 @ 2:54 pm 4. Alexander Coleman said …
A fine review, Phillip. I particularly enjoyed reading how the film melted your low-key expectations.
And I agree that Randy emerges as one of the most sympathetic cinematic portraits in many a year.
I fell for it as well.
on Feb 09 2009 @ 2:12 pm 5. Maurice said …
“THE FOUNTAIN remains Aronofsky’s masterpiece, but this one is another triumph for the visionary helmer.”
If these board only knew how far I have wandered in search of this statement, you would grant me the Mick Dundee award. That is the award where you set the recipient down in some forsaken outback, desert or swamp and let nature punish them for stupidity. Get real.
“The Fountain” is the one film I wish I would have been able to watch in 1968. Remember all the stories we heard from our older siblings? The one where they went to see the re-release of “Fantasia” and everybody took a hit of acid right before Deems Taylor started his monologue. That’s the only way I could have endured such a torturous, meaningless farce of celluloid that was Darrin’s opus. Of course, I was only 10 that year and I might have gotten by with just a hit of Canada Dry Sparkling water to get me burping along.
Here’s my gripe list about “The Fountain”:
1. The Fountain was pretentious
2. The Fountain was self indulgent
3. The Fountain was self gratifying
4. The Fountain self absorbed.
5. The Fountain was boring and made no sense.
There. That covers it.
To keep this short, I will issue a challenge to all: Write synopsis of “The Fountain” and keep it concise. I don’t wanna hear about man’s need to explore his mortality or man’s plight that he can’t understand God’s grace so we excise Him from our heart and mind in order to make sense of all the suffering in the world. Don’t quote Sarté, recite from Ecclesiastes or Melville. I just want to know what the film is about, not what you think it means.
It’s not a masterpiece, it’s a mess. And Brad Pitt saw that coming yards away and sidestepped that morass like Dick Butkus would a linemen so that he could lay a Chuck Norris smackdown on a running back behind the line of scrimmage.
That said, here’s a philosophy joke for Evan:
René de Carte walks into a bar. As he heads for a stool, a beautiful girls points to one of the stools and asks “Are you going to sit on this one?” “I don’t think I am” replies de Carte and he promptly disappears.
Oh, and this was a great review of my #2 movie this year. If Mickey don’t take Oscar home, I am boycotting MovieZeal.
on Feb 10 2009 @ 10:38 am 6. Evan Derrick said …
A synopsis of The Fountain:
Three parallel narratives (taking place in the present, 16th century South America, and the far future, respectively) tell the story of one man attempting to save the woman he loves.
Pretty concise, don’t you think, Maurice?
And as to boycotting MZ if Rourke doesn’t win best actor, I’m flattered you think we have that kind of power.
You should be pleased with MZ’s Best of 2008 list, which we’ll be posting in a few days.
on Mar 15 2010 @ 12:25 pm 7. Mccord said …
I’m afraid that the Pit bull wants a unique kind of proprietor…these pet dogs, no matter how ’supporting’ still have teeth, are nevertheless animals with no moral ideas and once they DO bite, won’t allow go. As in all creatures…some tend to be more suseptable to instinctual habits and time and time once again, this breed tends to accomplish just that.
on Apr 13 2011 @ 1:13 pm 8. Swampy said …
I loved the movie “The Wrestler” along with all of Daron Aronofsky’s other films. I deeply related and sympathized with the characters. I was able to laugh and be amused while feeling their pain and be drawn into their tragic circumstances. If you ask me: “The Wrestler” is Daron Aronofsky’s masterpiece.