4/4
Fox Searchlight Pictures, Rated R
Where do broken down professional wrestlers go when they’re over the hill and no longer 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.
Darren Aronofsky, that clean-cut 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 Requiem for a Heavyweight here, with that temperamental raging bull comeback kid himself, Mickey Rourke, as his designated roughneck muse.
Once-reigning heavy metal-era champ Randy “The Ram” Robinson of the Jersey wrestling circuit—this beaten down but unbending 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 50-something has-been, 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 showcase the pathetic grit and determination of this insistent loser.
Embracing excruciating performance misery and mutilation as a way of life, 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 Rourke’s Ram (or is it Ram’s Rourke, so welded are the two) has 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.
There’s also a tender and sad sidebar as Ram bares his bruised heart for an 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 and physical damage of often destructive notions of masculinity in this culture, 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.
So if Rourke doesn’t grab an Oscar, there is no justice on this planet, simply for crushing the collective audience soul with the often wordless torment of this abrasive but brutally wounded creature. In any case Ram, we feel your pain.
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