Nobody denies the theatricality of wrestling, even as the sport has moved from its cartoony ’80s heyday into the gory man-hugging of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. As realistic and bloody as it is, Darren Aronofsky’s (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain) The Wrestler has its spirit stuck firmly in the former camp, even as it forcibly tries to drag its super-sized hero into the modern age.
Mickey Rourke stars as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a former wrestling superstar now reduced to fighting small-scale matches in community centres and moving boxes at a grocery store. A lifetime of being pounded in the ring is written on his body — a hearing aid in his left ear, limp hair fried from peroxide, scars, splints and crumbling muscles. He spends his evenings pining after Cassidy (Marissa Tomei, reprising her “hooker with a heart of gold” persona) and thinking of his estranged daughter (Rachel Evan Wood).
Rourke is receiving well-earned kudos for his performance. Really, he’s playing himself — his own inglorious fall from stardom and history of drug abuse is the stuff of Hollywood legend. However, it doesn’t make his performance any less remarkable — when Randy describes himself as a “broken-down piece of meat,” that’s exactly what Rourke puts on screen. You can’t help but feel sorry for the big ol’ lug.
Aronofsky proves well-suited to the film, finding the despair in the chilly New Jersey setting and in the wonderfully constructed wrestling scenes. The matches are full of kinetic grace, while also dredging up real pain and gore, from simple punches to razor blade-and-staple-gun wounds.
Despite some saccharine moments designed to fit the narrative (deadbeat dad coming clean, a health crisis), The Wrestler isn’t a tale of redemption, but very much a tragedy — both a paean of sorts to all the world’s self-sacrificed one-trick ponies and a warning against a life lived, as Randy says, with “the candle burning at both ends.” Although, it should be said, the film has its share of funny moments courtesy of writer and ex-Onion editor Robert Siegel.
During one scene, Randy and Cassidy reminisce over their glory banger days of the ’80s, before their homespun brand of brawling, booze and sleaze began to turn on them. Though Randy directs his anger towards the ’90s — when Kurt Cobain came and ruined it all, he says — he forgets that the focus of his ire also advocated burning out, rather than fading away.
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