- Oh hey there, Darren Aronofsky, I don’t hate you anymore. This movie is heaps better than all the other critical darlings of the season. I imagine, though, that it’s not getting much award attention outside of Mickey Rourke’s performance because movies about wrestlers aren’t topical or serious or numbingly heart warming for the people who get to make decisions about these types of things. Failure all around.
- Loved the opening titles with the collage of press clippings, magazine covers, promotional posters, etc. for various Randy “The Ram” Robinson wrestling matches. Nothing could fit that better than the 1980s metal played over top. Elegant in its simplicity.
- I feel like this is the most humane (and human) movie I’ve seen in a long time and I think that’s why I actually feel pretty moved by it. There are all these movies that wear their family dysfunction or decrepitly washed up anti-heroes like a badge of cynical honour, like this is the only way to portray human imperfection with any sense of realism. The warts-and-all approach seems determined to show people at their absolute worst, to show them at their lowest points so that they can’t go anywhere but up. If that’s what’s required for the story, I guess that’s fine, but there’s rarely any optimism and how can your lowest point be a fulcrum for change without optimism? I’m not talking super sunshine-y, happy-go-lucky optimism, I’m talking about basic, salt of the earth, inate goodness in people. Not even the capacity to change, but the capacity to try to change even if you don’t. People fuck up a lot and people do a lot of terrible things, but few and far between are the people who are truly beyond all hope. The Ram gets to some pretty dark and gritty places in his life but he’s always trying to come back from them and he’s never trying to take anyone down with him when he falls and he’s not out for revenge when he tries to come back. There’s a basic decency that exists in almost all the characters in this movie and I feel like that decency is really missing in movies these days.
- All this exemplifies why it makes total sense for Bruce Springsteen to have written the title track on the soundtrack because Springsteen’s songs are populated by the same low, decerepit, washed-up has beens who are, pound for pound, pretty decent people otherwise. It’s not necessarily the blue collar, working class thing so much as a capacity for basic kindness when it’s most needed. Also, this song is great (although the intro and outro kind of suck). I am excited for it to be nominated for an Oscar and for Springsteen to perform it live.
Alongside Zac Efron.. - Marissa Tomei is supposed to be a washed up stripper but considering how good her body looks for 44 years-old, I have some difficulty relating to the obnoxious frat boys who complain that they want lap dances from a younger, more nubile dancer.
- If I’m not mistaken, I think in one shot we’re able to see a Dodge Ram logo on the side of her truck, which was kind of fun.
- There were a lot of absolutely hilarious scenes in this movie, all of them centering around rather banal experiences like preparing for a wrestling match or buying meat at the deli. The banter between the other wrestlers at the various shows was pretty hysterical as they went over what kind of moves they were going to use on each other. The first scene in the deli was particularly funny; when he addressed a woman clearly pushing ninety with “Hey, spring chicken, what can I get for you?” I nearly died. Again, it’s very human interaction that is natural and, if I may be so bold, touching. It feels real. The camaraderie and friendship between the other wrestlers on the circuit was especially nice.
- I didn’t particularly care for Evan Rachel Wood’s storyline in this as The Ram’s estranged daughter. He decides to go visit his daughter after he has a heart attack and she has the temper tantrum to end all temper tantrums when he shows up. I find this problematic because while we don’t know the circumstances of his leaving her, we get the sense that it happened a long time ago; the only picture of his daughter that Randy has is of her as a child in a school photo (maybe aged nine) and she wails about the many years of missed birthdays, so clearly it’s been some time since she last saw him. She complains about how he can’t keep screwing up with her like this, but it seemed a lot more like he’d been absent for an entire decade rather than that he’d been around enough to screw up her life repeatedly, lulling her into a false sense of having a relationship on the mend before he messed it up again. I don’t know, her reaction seemed to have very little to do with her father. Also, ERW is too pale.
I did appreciate, though, that they weren’t able to patch things up. They had a nice afternoon together before Randy inevitably failed once more, but I like that we were left with a concrete declaration of the end of the relationship because you don’t really see that in movies all that often (or at all?). I suppose this seems to be in opposition to what I said earlier about optimism and humaneness, but I think it better serves the realism of the characters. A more idealistic version of this film would have them working on a fledgling relationship by the time the movie ends; we may not know where the relationship would go, but we’d be certain it wasn’t over.
- The soundtrack was AWESOME. m/ The score was by Slash and Axl Rose got a special thank you in the credits. When they started playing “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, I got pretty excited, I will admit.
- The wrestling matches themselves were pretty funny. Some of the stuff these guys come up with is downright bizarre. The how-do-you-feel-about-staples guy pretty much took the cake, though.
- Wrestling is pretty operatic, now that I think about it. Entertainment for the masses delivering lowest common denominator amusements sounds about accurate.
- The jacket Randy bought for his daughter was absolutely fantastic and how he was so dead certain she’d like it. He’s so earnest in how hard he was trying.
- Mickey Rourke is phenomenal and awesome and will never get another role like this ever. It’s okay to have the stars align for a single moment of true greatness, I suppose, but all the buzz around him in this is acting like he’ll suddenly be A-list Hollywood with film offers left, right, and centre and I just don’t see it happening.
- I think this movie made me feel again. I got pretty misty several times at parts that weren’t even tragic or sad, just merciful or tender. Kill me now.
The Wrestler
The tear-jerking, heart-warming, crowd-pleasing film for the cynical bunch.
IMDB Plot Synopsis A drama centered on retired professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson as he makes his way through the independent circuit.
Gorgeous review. Especially considering Evan Rachel Wood- she did NOT do it for me at all.
I watched this movie with fascination even though I have never been a wrestling fan. Rourke’s portrayal is devastasting – dark, human, comic. There were some “Huh?” moments – Tomei looking “old”? as a stripper was a stretch considering how freakin’ hot she looked. Also, though I felt his pain when his daughter ultimately told him to eff off, her rage seemed too current, too hot, for a man she obviously had not seen in many years. The Ram’s lack of any other meaningingful connection in life besides his career, was tragic. At an age he felt used up, broken, inept to fix old relationships, or forge new ones, “suicide by wrestling” seemed the only way to go.