Darren Aronofsky's films have always had a polarizing effect on audiences. Personally, I have at least sort of enjoyed all of his films. Pi is kind of a mess, but it was interesting enough to keep me watching, Requiem for a Dream is one of the most perfectly disturbing films of all time (can anyone give a legitimate explanation for Ellen Burstyn losing best actress to Julia Roberts?), and The Fountain, aside from some mediocre acting, is a pretty good film. All of those films are highly stylized and do occasionally rely too heavily on different camera and editing tricks to get the point across. When I finally saw the preview for his latest film, The Wrestler, I was shocked. The film looks like it was shot on a handheld camera (just like Rachel Getting Married) and uses none of the stylistic tricks of Aronofsky's earlier work. This film simply relies on a great story, good, simple (at least for Aronofsky) direction and one of the great screen performances in recent years from Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson.
As the film opens, the camera stays behind Rourke as he sits in the changing room after a match. He walks out and the camera follows him, almost afraid to show his battered face to the crowd. The other wrestlers and the devoted fans all treat the Ram as a hero, and his opponents are honored to lose to him. His promoter gets him to agree to fight a rematch of his most famous bout, against a wrestler called the Ayatollah, at an upcoming convention, and Randy, now relegated to weekend fights in high school gyms and rec centers, sees it as his shot at a comeback. That night he goes to a strip club to see his one friend not involved in the wrestling industry, a dancer named Cassidy, played by Marissa Tomei. She is nearly Randy's age, and she can also sense that her days in this career are coming to an end. During the days he works, unloading boxes at a grocery store. After a brutal match involving barbed wire and a staple gun, Randy has a heart attack, and his doctors tell him that he must quit wrestling. He tries to leave the ring, pursue Cassidy and reconnect with his teenage daughter (played by Evan Rachel Wood), but nothing works out. Despite their obvious connection, Cassidy has a thing against dating customers, and his daughter hates him, deservedly so, for never being there and ruining her life. Even when he has a shot with her, he forgets to go, and she decides that they will never see each other again. Randy realizes that his life is in the ring, and he reschedules the rematch. The final shots of The Ram giving it all for the crowd in what he knows may be his final match are among the most intense and heartbreaking in any film this year.
Without Rourke, this film would have been nothing. If you have read any reviews of The Wrestler, you have heard enough of how Rourke's career path perfectly follows Randy's. The audience's knowledge of Rourke's life, going from Hollywood heartthrob to broken down boxer to resurrected star, adds to the depth and reality of the performance. The Ram's final speech to the crowd, where he talks about how he has always done this for them, feels more real than any other moment in film this year. If the Oscars were actually based on artistic merit and not politicking, Rourke would already have his trophy. As it stands, he is the leader in a race with Sean Penn for Milk and Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon, which I plan on seeing later this week. Since the academy will no doubt ignore Phillip Seymour Hoffman's work in the criminally underrated Synecdoche, New York, the other nominees will probably be Brad Pitt for his great work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and either Clint Eastwood, Leonardo Dicaprio or Richard Jenkins. I can say with full certainty that Rourke's performance is the best of the bunch. outside of Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood and maybe Hoffman in Synecdoche (the two performances are very different but essentially equal in my mind) it is probably the strongest leading role over the last few years. Tomei also got a golden globe nomination, and I think her work was strong enough to earn her a best supporting actress nomination later this month. Finally, just as a matter of note, any film that can make me forget how much I hate Guns 'n Roses, even if it's just for a few minutes, must be a great film, and that certainly describes The Wrestler.
Without Rourke, this film would have been nothing. If you have read any reviews of The Wrestler, you have heard enough of how Rourke's career path perfectly follows Randy's. The audience's knowledge of Rourke's life, going from Hollywood heartthrob to broken down boxer to resurrected star, adds to the depth and reality of the performance. The Ram's final speech to the crowd, where he talks about how he has always done this for them, feels more real than any other moment in film this year. If the Oscars were actually based on artistic merit and not politicking, Rourke would already have his trophy. As it stands, he is the leader in a race with Sean Penn for Milk and Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon, which I plan on seeing later this week. Since the academy will no doubt ignore Phillip Seymour Hoffman's work in the criminally underrated Synecdoche, New York, the other nominees will probably be Brad Pitt for his great work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and either Clint Eastwood, Leonardo Dicaprio or Richard Jenkins. I can say with full certainty that Rourke's performance is the best of the bunch. outside of Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood and maybe Hoffman in Synecdoche (the two performances are very different but essentially equal in my mind) it is probably the strongest leading role over the last few years. Tomei also got a golden globe nomination, and I think her work was strong enough to earn her a best supporting actress nomination later this month. Finally, just as a matter of note, any film that can make me forget how much I hate Guns 'n Roses, even if it's just for a few minutes, must be a great film, and that certainly describes The Wrestler.
Rating (out of ****): ****
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