In the heat of the awards season, it’s
easy to trivialize a shoe-in performance by treating it as a
product and not a piece of art. By the time the Oscars rolled
around last year, Daniel Day Lewis’ maddeningly complex portrait
of a greedy oilman had been coined the greatest work of the year
and it was left unexplored as such. I can’t help but feel that
awards voters lost sight of the brilliance they were voting for
because said brilliance had become a given after all the
critical raves, a notion that suggests that even the most vital
art is being cheapened and commercialized.
This is my preface to cautioning
filmgoers, entertainment commentators, and awards-voters that
this year we must not lose sight of the depth of the performance
that will undoubtedly win Best Actor. It belongs to Mickey
Rourke and by now, with the great film it drives playing in New
York and Los Angeles, needs no introduction. But I’ll provide
one anyway because I cannot exhaust talking about how remarkable
Rourke, an actor who had long been considered down-and-out in
Hollywood despite occasionally strong efforts in Tarantino and
Rodriguez films, is in this role. Nor can The Wrestler’s
overall greatness be overstated.
Part of Rourke’s strength in The
Wrestler comes from his ability to relate his own has-been
image in the film industry to that of his character, Randy “The
Ram” Ramsinski, in professional wrestling. (In fact, the
connection runs even deeper than that: Rourke once took five
years off making movies to pursue boxing.) The sense of
sympathy he has for the character shows in his ability to bring
humanity an isolated screw-up of a man. Randy, once a prized
fighter, is now relegated to working in a supermarket during the
week and taking amateur wrestling gigs on the weekends to pay
the bills. But he often doesn’t even manage that feat, not
making rent on his trailer-home and resorting to drowning his
miseries in lust for stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) with the
feeble cash he pockets from high-school gym matches and
poorly-attended signings.
Rourke approaches Randy from the
perfect angle: he never treats the character as a “lovable
loser,” nor does he apologize for Randy’s mistakes. Instead,
Rourke taps into a man who doesn’t know anything beyond
wrestling, full of regret and wanting to change but unable to
overcome his way of life. Randy is a delicate guy, but he has
been conditioned to be a wrestler. The juxtaposition between
Randy’s underlying humanity and the brutality of the “sport” he
engages in is shocking.
It is often said that foreign films
offer the key to other worlds, but director Darren Aronofsky has
used said key to unlock an ignored part of the impoverished
corners of America. Shooting on gritty 16mm, he delves into the
gut-churning details of a pastime that is mistaken for a staged
show used to garner TV ratings. Randy cuts himself in the
forehead and takes hits from staple-guns and chairs, all because
he has been conditioned to feed off the pathetic crowd response
to such vanity. He robs himself physically and financially by
using steroids, as seen in a fascinating deal sequence that
Rourke wrote himself. Watching the fights and the action
surrounding them, the viewer is put through hell, and rightfully
so. (Steve McQueen could’ve learned a thing or two about this
from Aronofsky before making the dreadful Hunger.) With
each blow Randy takes, we wonder if we’re responding to man’s
inhumanity to man or how such a humane man could see inhumanity
as his calling.
While Randy’s tragic failure to
discover a better life for himself is explored in his continued
pursuit of wrestling—even when Randy’s doctor orders him to stop
fighting after his heart nearly fails, he realizes he will
inevitability return for a touted rematch with an old
opponent—it’s most heartbreaking in his destructive
relationships with the women in his life. He pursues Cassidy to
an unhealthy extent, even convincing her they might be in love,
blinded to the harsh reality they embody because he’s become
immune to it. And then there’s Randy’s heartbreaking
relationship with his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), who is
beginning to live life on her own without him before he appears
at her doorstep, only to crush her hopes of normalcy for the
umpteenth time. The dynamic is painful to watch because we know
Randy’s heart is in the right place—by this time we’ve developed
a strong connection with him despite his strong character
flaws—but also understand his existence is made up almost
exclusively of self-implosions. Wood’s anguished performance
makes the scenes the two share all the more emotional; while
Rouke’s work may be taking up the bulk of the film’s buzz, Wood
should also be nominated for an Oscar.
In a movie full of complicated
character foils and dramatic intensity, it would’ve been easy
for Aronofsky, writer Robert D. Siegel, and the cast to have
strayed from the most realistic portrayal possible. Against the
odds, they have made a film that authentically captures life’s
pleasures and disappointments in the gritty, grimey world they
ambitiously tackled. The characters act as though they would in
real life and the situations have been researched extensively.
Randy’s fundamental lack of understanding of how he can overcome
his situation and the ensuing conflicts challenge both the
viewer’s perception of American poverty and their sympathy for a
type of forgotten person who often goes unnoticed. But what
makes The Wrestler a great film is not its social
perceptiveness – the true magic rests in its uncompromising,
affecting emotions, which grab the audience on an innate level
and don’t let go, spurring a visceral reaction that begs for
afterthought. The picture is a masterpiece.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
Review Published on: 12.18.2008
Screened on: 12.12.2008 at the Aero
Theatre in Santa Monica, CA.