Kelly Wand"The Wrestler" review
March 12th 2009 06:51
If you thought his popcorn trick from Diner was painful...
In some ways, “The Wrestler” is Darren Aronofsky’s weirdest movie yet. Bleak and gritty, shot in drab, chilly, sweaty New Jersey locker-rooms and trailer parks, it offers a harsh, fluorescent look into the (final?) days of a self-described “brokendown piece of meat” who was once royalty in a sport that largely consists of enduring scripted physical punishment on a rubber mat before a crowd of howling human jackals. In subject matter and tone, it makes Requiem for a Dream look like Topper. But it also makes you feel more human, and embarrassed to be human*.
Mickey Rourke’s Robin Ramzinski, ring name Randy "The Ram" Robinson, officially qualifies as a tragic figure. A pro wrestler in his fifties, things suck so hard for Randy that you pity him least when he’s in the ring getting his face stapled and windshields broken over his skull. At one time these staged concussions were his idea of fun and profit. Now his heart is getting weaker, his checks smaller, his videogames older. Though still a fan favorite whose arrivals inspire audiences to offer him their cheers and prosthetic limbs and his peers young and old alike treat him with deference and affection (at least the type shown an ancient crippled veteran), the boss at his backbreaking day job makes no secret of his contempt and distaste for Randy's vocation. His daughter hates him since he abandoned her years ago and he doesn’t know a thing about her. The woman he had her by is never even mentioned, so we know that must’ve been bad. His only romantic prospects are with a 40-year-old stripper who refuses to date her clientele. His landlord locks him out of his trailer. He has a heart attack.
Then things go bad.
Rourke’s performance is everything you’ve heard and remarkably nuanced considering how unaffected and physical a character he’s playing. There’s one Steadicam shot of him from behind as he ambles past cheering hordes into the ring, breaking chairs over his own head to whip them into a frenzy; somehow by his gait alone he manages to simultaneously convey loneliness, braggadocio, and professional pride. The scenes where he and his opponents methodically go over each scripted step of their upcoming bloodbaths are hilariously subdued and detailed. Promoters give them no cues; they just work it all out in locker rooms at the last minute and compliment each other on taking previous dives in other arenas, other shows. Envelopes containing Randy’s meager pay of quarters and five dollar bills get handed to him in hospitals between matches, the same facilities where he racks up zillions in wound-dressings and surgeries. Let's face it, other people’s shit jobs are always fascinating, and it’s hard to think of many shittier than this. Soldiers, bouncers and whores probably get better pay and medical benefits.
Which brings us to Randy’s love interest Cassidy, Marisa Tomei’s stripper with a heart of gold and haunches of cream. Tomei is lovely, sad and convincing, even if her radiant adorability, not to mention her gracefully adept pole-dancing moves and the slight fact that she has a body her 19-year-old co-workers would kill for, conspire to make a key scene where she’s getting dissed by young horny customers (and later, Rourke) more than a little unbelievable. It's sort of a spelled-out cliche that yeah, in her own way she’s playing a character who’s in the same body-related showmanship biz that Randy’s in, which isn’t something she likes to be reminded of (the difference, of course, being that Randy loves being a wrestler, and she’s not so thrilled with the stripper life). But the dialogue and staging's so organic, you sort of buy into it. Plus it’s hard to resist anyone who starts dancing in public the second they hear a Ratt song. (Even before I saw this movie, I automatically assumed that’s how Aronofsky wooed Rachel Weisz.)
While the wrestling scenes have a hallucinatory nightmarish quality reminiscent of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, the bits where Randy tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), though sparing, are the weakest, most predictable nuggets. She’s a necessary contrivance but in the way of those her role is underwritten and uninspired. We don’t learn much about what makes her character tick outside of her breaking and entering skills and her Dad-related distaste and bitterness. When she inevitably proclaims that she never wants to see him again after he was a few hours tardy one night, it feels as abrupt and forced as his reasons for being tardy. While Robert Siegel’s script doesn’t give Wood much room to breathe, maybe part of the problem is that Wood is simply too beautiful and well-adjusted-looking to suggest suffering too horribly from abandonment issues. A plump, homely, acne-stricken girl might have been more poignant, which of course is an impossibility in modern movies, even gritty realistic ones, so instead they made her a lesbian, and her lover black, to underscore that she’s “troubled”, the same way villains in '80's action movies had ponytails and Euro accents to underscore their sliminess.
Daughter nitpickery aside, The Wrestler is yet further proof that American acting has never been as good as it is right now, which should be reason enough even for the squeamish and maternal to see it. Besides, everyone knows that wrestling’s not real. Stripping neither.
*Kinda like reading Aronofsky’s next project is a “Robocop” remake.
| 69 |
| Vote |
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
I am a massive Aronofsky fan and my Rourke love falls into the unhealthy arena so it vexes me I still haven't seen this much discussed film.
Soon there will be review on my site, very soon i hope...great review I enjoyed reading.
Comment by Kelly Wand
Sprocket Holed