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Where do broken down professional wrestlers go out
to pasture, when they're over the hill and no longer quite
ready to rumble and roar? The deli counter at the local
supermarket, hawking potato salad and cold cuts? If the
magnificently gritty, unflinching The Wrestler has its say
on the subject, the answer is maybe, maybe not. And at the
same time, just how coldhearted and unforgiving the real
world out there can be, even with those obsessively perfected
skills honed for their casual amusement by bottom feeder
wrestlers. Darren Aronofsky, that cleancut mastermind with
a mysterious dark side who first made waves on screen foraging
through the depraved waters of drug addiction with the Hubert
Selby Jr. adapted Requiem For A Dream, kind of does masterpiece
territory 'requiem for a heavyweight' here. And with that
temperamental raging bull comeback kid himself, Mickey Rourke
as his designated roughneck muse.***
Once reigning 1980s heavy metal era champ Randy 'The
Ram' Robinson of the Jersey wrestling circuit, this beaten
down but unbending strung-out fighter with long stringy,
bleached blonde hair, still bulging biceps, and hearing
aids for his damaged cauliflower ears, can't even pay the
rent on his dilapidated trailer. Locked out and living in
his car, the fiftysomething has-been Randy, who once laid
claim to a videogame and action figure in his own image,
makes a new bid to regain his reputation and pride in the
wrestling ring, despite the ravages of age, a dissipated
life and a failing heart.***
Aronofsky drags us through the pain, quiet heartbreak
and dubious noisy triumphs as Ram steels himself and his
buffed but disintegrating body for an ill-advised, delusional
return to the wrestling ring. And grueling, gladiatorial
rematches that movie audiences will find difficult not to
cringe through, but will likely be too captivated by the
sheer, if at times pathetic grit and determination of this
insistent loser.***
Embracing excruciating performance misery and mutilation
as a way of life because it's the sole source of remaining
dignity and public admiration for this fiercely dedicated
glutton for punishment, Rourke, apparently drawing from
his own life as a recognized actor who plunged through the
lower depths and is making a bid for a return bout with
this role, is nothing less than extraordinary. And by the
time he's taken us through the self-inflicted wringer of
ordeals to the flesh involving applied barbed wire, staple
guns, ashcan bashing, bug spray and coronaries, we're pretty
much vicariously beat. And, while Rourke's Ram (or is it
Ram's Rourke, so welded are the two) takes us through the
often bizarre wrestling grooming regimen of hair bleaching,
armpit shaving, and tanning treatments, along with secret
razor slashing in the ring to arouse cheering audiences
hungry for gladiatorial blood.***
There's also a tender and sad sidebar as Ram bares
his bruised heart for a likewise into denial, aging pole
dancer (Marisa Tomei) at a local dive. Is she the longtime
girlfriend who has a special thing for Ram that we experience
through his eyes. Or just a calculating sex performer, seductively
manipulating smitten customers for cash. As Aronofsky keeps
us on our toes wondering whether she's the real deal or
stringing the infatuated lonely guy along, we're just as
clueless and needy. ***
If anything, The Wrestler exposes the troublesome psychological,
let alone physical damage of often destructive notions of
masculinity and masculine identity in this culture that
seep out of all those superhero fantasies crowding the screens.
And at the same time adding to that list of survival essentials
- food and shelter - the necessity of dignity and self-respect,
even at a potentially fatal cost.***
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