Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler: Not As Stupid As It Sounds

When I first heard that Mickey Rourke's "comeback movie" was called The Wrestler, in which he played a ridiculous pro-wrestler down on his luck, I giggled. Pro-wrestling evokes a strong reaction from lots of people, and it's usually negative. Even though I figured I'd dig this movie (I did, for the record), I didn't expect it to be like, all deeper than that and shit.



Pro-wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) looked like a truck had run over his face. Several times. For someone in a "fake" profession, Randy had enough facial craters to frighten a puppy. His fake persona as The Ram preceded him, but his grunts and moans and coughs reminded us, as the camera followed him and obscured his face, that his pain was actually quite real.

Like a comic book movie montage, The Wrestler opened with loud 80s hair metal and an abundance of promo posters from Randy's wrestling matches back when he was a star. Twenty years later, the hair metal still roared - his cheesy, long, bleached blond mane to match - but time had left him behind. Instead, VFW halls and high school gymnasiums, holding a handful of fans who remembered him, became his wrestling arenas. Half of those fans had become fellow wrestlers who fawned in his presence, or at the opportunity to "lose" a match against him. As a fan favorite, The Ram didn't "lose," and only "heels," or bad guy wrestlers, wrestled him.

The matches got pretty brutal. Aronofsky took a close look at what we accept as fake and exposed how real it can feel. We felt the pain of the fork scraped against The Ram's forehead and the glass shards and thumb tacks pulled from his back. Did our squirming and cringing in response make it real, or just impressive showmanship?

As is The Wrestler's point, it's hard to tell. Randy's heart attack forced his retirement, rendering The Ram meaningless, rendering Randy's life meaningless. He went from the stage to behind a deli counter with a name tag that said "Robin," and he couldn't get it changed to Randy (Randy The Ram Robinson, aka Robin Ramzinksi, his real name that he always corrected by saying "Just call me Randy"). Turning to his one companion, Cassidy the stripper (Marisa Tomei), Randy sought real comfort. Unfortunately, Cassidy's profession left her battling the line between reality and her job as well. Though she could let Randy say her real name, Pam, and tell him she's a mother, she could not hold the hand of a 'customer.' Regardless, Pam encouraged Randy to visit his estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) and helped him buy a gift for her. He temporarily won Stephanie's affection, confessing his paternal faults were his own and unrelated to her. Maintaining this new reality with real relationships and real emotions proved more difficult.

The only indisputable realness in the film was Rourke himself. Rourke never asked for our sympathy, and he often refused it. His rugged face often sat still like stone unless he exited reality for the ring, where pain left him and a smirk emerged. Nonetheless, he embodied a harsh reality that most care to laugh at, and Rourke allowed the audience to laugh too. Randy was drunk and unreliable and infuriating as a father, but Rourke somehow gave him some charm. After this performance, Rourke has a better shot than Randy ever did at making his comeback.

Pro-wrestling seems really stupid. Yes, the matches are fixed and a winner predetermined. But they fly all over the fucking place, off ring posts, off ladders, through tables (on fire), through announcer booths, onto metal steps, into metal poles, onto the thin mat atop the concrete floor outside the ring. There are tricks to making such moves less devastating to the body, but in the long run, this kind of shit is devastating to the body. Some wrestlers sustain year-long injury, others paralysis. Some have died. The fake spectacle in professional wrestling undercuts the passion of these performers and the life they might eventually sacrifice to do it. All wrestlers who appeared in this film are amateur pro-wrestlers in real life, trying to make a name for themselves and barely making money. Perhaps it seems stupid, but that shit is real, yo.