The Wrestler | Little White Lies

The Wrestler

15 Jan 2009 / Released: 16 Jan 2009

A black and white circular graphic with a central eye-like shape surrounded by radiating lines.
A black and white circular graphic with a central eye-like shape surrounded by radiating lines.
5

Anticipation.

Aronofsky is one of the boldest and most exciting directors of his generation.

4

Enjoyment.

Merciless, uncompromising, bleak and brilliant.

4

In Retrospect.

Rourke earns himself another shot at the title.

A stun­ning career come­back from Mick­ey Rourke under­pins Dar­ren Aronofsky’s trag­ic sports drama.

After the vault­ing ambi­tion of The Foun­tain, The Wrestler is a dra­mat­ic return to earth for Dar­ren Aronof­sky. And not just to the squalid streets of the East Coast, but to a more famil­iar tone and texture.

Amidst the cracked and crum­bling archi­tec­ture of New Jer­sey, ex-pro wrestler Randy The Ram’ Robin­son (Mick­ey Rourke) scut­tles through the seedy spaces of the Amer­i­can dream. This is the land­scape of despair, a place of pain and humil­i­a­tion where The Ram plies his trade, sur­viv­ing on the roar of the crowd and the bet­ter, bit­ter mem­o­ries of years long gone.

But as tight­ly as he holds onto the past, The Ram has squan­dered his future. Besides the teenage daugh­ter who hates him and the strip­per he can’t have, the years of abuse have tak­en their toll. For The Ram, the choice between death or glo­ry is both real and urgent. But where The Foun­tain was dri­ven by a fear of dying, The Wrestler shares the same pain as Aronofsky’s ear­li­er work – death is easy; it’s life that is hard.

Indeed, The Wrestler is every­thing The Foun­tain wasn’t – shot in 35 days, entire­ly hand­held and root­ed in a grainy mun­dan­i­ty, it’s almost as if Aronof­sky is des­per­ate to reaf­firm his indie roots. And if that’s the plan, he does so brilliantly.

For the first 20 min­utes the cam­era stalks Rourke from behind, down­wind, like a hunter track­ing an ani­mal. When you final­ly see his face, the effect is jar­ring – that strange mask of skin pulled tight, like some­thing stitched togeth­er from the unwant­ed parts of oth­er peo­ple; as bruised and bro­ken as a New Jer­sey slum. Aronof­sky shoots him with­out sen­ti­ment and Rourke reacts with­out ego – as in the ring, so in the film: there’s sim­ply no place to hide. Play­ing a char­ac­ter called The Ram, with hair like asps and lion’s courage, Rourke is an authen­tic kind of chimera – his own che­quered biog­ra­phy adding depth and dra­ma to the sto­ry. His is a life writ­ten on his face, and then bru­tal­ly erased.

The wrestling scenes are unflinch­ing­ly staged, mer­ci­less­ly expos­ing the audi­ence to every last nerve end­ing of pain. There’s a touch of Requiem for a Dream in The Ram’s bru­tal tra­jec­to­ry, but this is a more mature piece of film­mak­ing – less fran­ti­cal­ly edit­ed, wis­er and also, at times, dark­ly humor­ous. Clint Mansell’s score is also more attuned – 80s rock replaces the haunt­ing strings – and the sound design as a whole is excep­tion­al, often jux­ta­posed with the images to dev­as­tat­ing effect.

But it’s not just in the ring that Rourke embod­ies the rest­less, reck­less ener­gy of The Ram; it’s in his still­ness too, and most espe­cial­ly in his eyes. Some of his best scenes are with Marisa Tomei’s dancer, Cas­sidy. Each of them is out of time, and look­ing at the oth­er they see them­selves reflect­ed. But there’ll be no redemp­tion for them – no moment of enlight­en­ment, no respite or reprieve. This, after all, is the old Aronof­sky, and he’s not big on hap­py endings.

That, too, is how The Wrestler avoids the clichés of the sports dra­ma, for all the odd moments that don’t always ring true (Evan Rachel Wood is lum­bered with an under-writ­ten role as The Ram’s daugh­ter). But then The Wrestler on film is much like the real thing – script­ed moments come with the ter­ri­to­ry, but in the right hands the end result can become a dif­fer­ent kind of spec­ta­cle entire­ly. Here again, Aronof­sky proves him­self to have the surest pair in the business.

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