Disaster Year 2008: The Wrestler

The Wrestler toys with the inherent fallacies of an idealised hyper-masculinity. Randy The Ram is a professional wrestler, he must exude a sense of healthy virility. Ram gamely complies. His hair is golden, his muscles tanned and throbbing. He resembles an 80s rock mentored idea of a manly outlaw, all manes and brawn. That's the image, but The Wrestler explores the upkeep necessary to maintain the illusion. Ram must preen and obsess to sustain his identity. Behind the rugged masculinity is a feminised dedication to body image. He must visit tanning salons to keep his body a sunburnt brown, his brittle hair requires constant bleaching and dyeing for consistency. He's chasing his own fiction. The buffed exterior also hides a battered interior. Ram has heart problems, he needs glasses, and occasionally wears a hearing aid. His body is shattered. Joints require tape and pad bolstering, he winces when he stands. His muscles are mostly prop, swelled through a strict regime of chemical injections and supplements. Taking to the woods for a post heart-op jog, Ram can barely manage a trot before shrinking into convulsive panic. The injury extends to his own sense of self, he's unable to think about himself in any terms other than adored. Although charming, he struggles to make and sustain connections. He longs instead for the crowd. He destroys himself for them.

Wrestle Jammin'

For your listening pleasure, please find inclosed Joel Feinberg's chiptune theme music for The Wrestler's mocked-up NES grappler Wrestle Jam. If you're puzzled at the lack of Ram Jammin' in said vid, it's because the footage used is from real-life NES tights-and-fights sim Pro Wrestling. Kotaku ran an article on the faux title's genesis the other day, find that here. Good reads!

More Wrestler

Took in The Wrestler again last night, this time with a much bigger audience. Like all truly great movies, it seemed shorter, slighter, quicker. It barely began, and it was away again. Rather than write another rambling love letter, here's a couple of rambling love points I completely failed to make in my previous review. No doubt it'll end up longer than the review it supplements. A touch more specific this time, so if you haven't had the pleasure yet, you might not want to read on.

1. Unashamed male tenderness.

Professional Wrestling is a soap opera. The choreographed dance men can watch and enjoy without ever feeling like their sexuality is being called into question. If you're a fan, this, despite the oily tanned muscles on show, is all butch. If you're a fan. Otherwise: marginalised and largely centralised since it's 80s heyday, the theatre clings desperately to the invented idea of 'sports entertainment'. It's unloved. It's critically derelict. It's fake. It's for dolts and thugs. It's gay even.

The Wrestler portrays these slighted lunks as a generous family of of back-patters, all eager to dole out praise for their fellow performers. Ram is treated like a God by the kids. They call him sir, and fawn when he compliments them. They love him. His steroid dealer giggles like a child when Ram inspects his muscles. The titty bar bouncer Big Chris can barely get a crossed word out when Ram starts acting the prick.

In-ring nemesis Ayatollah is concerned when Ram visibly starts to flag. He lies down and begs Ram to end the match. After hearing some bemused indifference from a group of women exiting the cinema last night, it's hard not to see The Wrestler as a purely male emotional experience. I'm not even sure why. Is it deep seated gender identity? Fulfilment in working to provide? Being unable to adequately express your feelings? At it's core, Wrestler is about a failure pulling himself together long enough to shine very very brightly. It's about doing one thing exceptionally well, while everything else crumbles.

2. Music.

It's the moment that Ram's rambling guitar theme finally stops it's confused circling, transforming into a triumphant, throbbing rock and roll pound. It's Springsteen's close-out poem to earnest losers - a fee-less favour to his friend Mickey Rourke. It's providing context for a Guns N' Roses hit I never cared even a little bit for: clod-rock melodrama united to wonderful, trembling image. In The Wrestler, Sweet Child o' Mine sounds like a transcendental angel choir; an unspeakably mournful, hair prickling melody.

The Wrestler

Recalling the directionless plight of Jake Roberts from Barry Blaustein's 1999 grapple confessional Beyond the Mat; Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler strikes a similar observational nerve, passively tailing Mickey Rourke's washed-up hair-hero Randy the Ram as he puzzles through the dregs of his pro wrestling career. Twenty years past his prime, his best days rendered as lurid NES-bit distractions whilst indulgent neighbourhood kids prattle on about Call of Duty. He has a daughter that won't speak to him, a week-day job he hates, and the closest thing to an adult relationship is infrequently pestering a slightly past-her-prime stripper, played by the luminous Marisa Tomei. Finding himself in hospital after a brutal hardcore match, Ram attempts to put his life back together. As an outline: ho-hum. Thankfully, Mickey Rourke (and indeed every else involved with the production) is (are) incredible. 

Ram's return from the wilderness to a nostalgia-baiting confrontation with a newly relevant heel is easily read in the context of Rourke's tossed-out acting career. A shining light in the 1980s, Rourke lost himself in booze and amateur boxing, destroying the matinee star looks he was (partially) cherished for. Providing able support in a couple of recent Tony Scott flicks, Rourke was back front-and-centre playing 'Conan in a trench coat' Marv in 2005's Sin City. Not everyone was convinced though. It didn't help that Rourke was somewhat short-changed with the Marv role, the more fearful, slef-reflective second dimension of that comic book character jettisoned by the big screen adaptation for one-note chuckles. Still, who can argue now? Rourke's life is the role, the years of success and self-destruction informing every inch of this Robin Ramzinki. Rourke's earnest, dignified performance perfectly compliments Aronofsky's unfussy, documentary styled direction. The Wrestler is not some career-crash geek-show, it's a Springsteen sketch of the private lives of macho dreamers. It didn't quite work out for them.