The Wrestler

4/4 stars

The Wrestler is an impeccably real experience, a gritty movie about a man’s dirty, small and ever-contracting world. Mickey Rourke’s performance has been the focus of the movie’s acclaim, but what sealed it for me was the veracity of the life that Darren Aronofsky gave him as a boundary to that performance. Rourke plays Randy “The Ram” Ramzinski, a washed up legend of a pro-wrestler. He has sacrificed his body and everything else in his life for years over his passion for the ring, and is now left with pitifully little to show for it. I was reminded (as I often am) of Michael Mann’s work. Wrestling is for Ramzinski what Mann would call “the elevated experience of his life,” and like Mann’s characters, his passion for it leaves little else in his world intact. He lives in a trailer park and is behind on rent; he relies on neighborhood kids and a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) for companionship. He believes that he and Cassidy may have a future together, and the movie illustrates that they do have a lot in common. They’re both in the body business and are both the worse for wear; the time it has bought them is running out. Rourke gives a performance of incredible commitment and believability, to say nothing of its physical aspects. His loneliness, his regrets, his good heart and his bad decisions, Rourke makes them all tangible.

I was almost deterred from giving The Wrestler a perfect score by a number of small factors. The first is Evan Rachel Wood, who is inexplicably popular among both critics and real people. I got tired of her big sad eyes and the camera that never tired of drinking in her good looks in Across the Universe. Here in The Wrestler, she didn’t really have time to annoy me, but it was difficult not to notice that she didn’t really do much. A lot of people have said she’s brilliant; even Mickey Rourke has sung her praises, but whenever I see one of her performances, I see acting and not the character. Perhaps Rourke and others have seen some better movies than I have. Another problem is that at times Randy does things that seem so improbably stupid that I have trouble continuing to sympathize with him. The best example may be when he blows off his daughter to go drinking, then comes crawling back for forgiveness, so soon after regaining her love the first time. You’ll recognize other examples for yourself. What I came to realize though, is that while we may not see the world on Randy Ramzinski’s terms, and he may not behave as we wish he would, we still understand him. Like an underdog sports team, we root for him even when rooting for him is hard. In the end, I was moved by the foolish extent of his dedication, smiling at his self sacrificing bravado. The Wrestler is one of those movies that sounds depressing but isn’t; it enriches you by allowing you to feel for another person’s small triumphs.