The Wrestler
February 2, 2009
Darren Aronofsky focuses on lost age, faded glory, economic desperation, loneliness, regret, and the limitations of body over determination in this unflinchingly realistic study of a professional wrestler long past his prime. In a much acclaimed and analyzed performance, Mickey Rourke channels personal and professional demons to portray Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a former star wrestler in the heyday of the sport in the '80's, but in the '00's he's living in a trailer park, half deaf, stringing together paltry appearance fees at local contests that stretch his ravaged, steroid juiced body to the breaking point. After one particularly brutal match, in which razor wire, bug spray, and a staple gun are used to disturbingly realistic effect, Ram collapses like a ton of bricks and is told his heart can't take the strain anymore, but what is there for a washed up steroid case with no skills and a painful nostalgia for the past? Aronofsky, writer Robert Siegel, and Rourke take pity less on Ram than on the era/sport that inflated his ego and expectations to unrealistic, and unhealthy heights, leaving a former star, advancing on old age, without means, without meaningful relationships, and without an acceptable plan for retirement, though Rourke, accepting Ram's fate with a determination and heartbreaking sadness that comes from years of personal exile and abuse, wears the burdens of bad choices and inevitability like a wounded, but proud champion, and it's his performance, and Aronofsky's relentlessly tracking camera, that makes the film so brilliantly, and devastatingly affective.
By Adam Suraf