Review: The Wrestler
by John NolteDirector Darren Aronofsky’s stark look at the subculture of low-level professional wrestling builds to an impressive and ambitious character study that looks to be equal parts Requiem For A Heavyweight (1962) and The Set-Up (1949) before a predictable, cliched, cop-out of a climax unravels what had been so compelling into something more akin to What Price Narcissism?
Mickey Rourke summons a career performance as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a washed up WWF-style wrestler who refuses to let go of his nearly extinguished celebrity even though his superstar days were left well behind decades ago in the era of spandex, big hair, and heavy metal anthems. With his long, stringy, bleached hair, artificial tan, and steroid-abused body, Robinson’s a hulking, grotesque monster of a man willing to suffer whatever it takes for another round of love from the crowd.
What he suffers most, however, are relentless humiliations, both big and small. Throughout New Jersey, Robinson spills blood in any seedy, makeshift gymnasium the circuit sets up. No matter how small the venue, though, the crowds still don’t reach capacity and he isn’t able to make even enough money to cover the rent on a depressing single-wide trailer he calls home. To supplement his income, Robinson deals in the drugs of his profession and unloads grocery trucks for a cruel, little man who lives to ridicule him.
Lonely and lost outside the ring, the faded superstar turns to Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), a fortyish stripper who for sixty bucks gives him something he needs even more than a topless lap dance, a few moments of gentle, human tenderness. Though it remains unspoken between them, both know few others can relate to life as aging performance-meat, with time running out and no future in sight.
After a particularly bloody and sadistic bout involving a staple gun and razor wire, Robinson wisely takes a doctor’s advice, retires, and goes about the business of building a normal life. He takes full-time hours at the grocery store, let’s Cassidy know how he feels about her, and after too many years reaches out to his estranged, college-aged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), whom he abandoned for fame when she was still a child.
The Wrestler has at least a dozen exceptional scenes that rank as the best of the year, all beautifully acted, shot and directed – especially those detailing the grim routine of Robinson’s life. The way in which Robinson and Cassidy find a way to connect through a shared loathing of 90’s music, and Robinson’s first day behind the deli counter are unforgettable and alone worth the price of admission.
What grinds The Wrestler up are the demands of a three-act plot structure and the unimaginative and rote way in which those demands are satisfied. What was subtle goes melodrama. What was real becomes contrived. And instead of a film that had a life force of its own, you feel the gears turn as characters betray everything we know about them in order to create necessary crisis points.
But other than Rourke’s moments, including an affecting confession and apology, there is no point where the father/daughter subplot is either subtle or real. Every imaginable cliche involving an embittered, angry daughter hurt by her loser father gets a hearing. And rather than try to rise above her tired scenes, Evan Rachel Wood seems dedicated to making obvious performance choices.
Which brings me to how the film ends. Without giving anything away, let’s just say that Aronofsky and screenwriter, Robert D. Siegel, take the road most travelled. The choice itself is bad enough but to have a character make a long speech to explain it is insult on top of injury. A hundred minutes spent laying down themes and developing a complicated and compelling character we very much sympathize with, and rather than take the time to craft the compelling and complicated fate he deserved, we get … this.
Every hopeful, painful moment of Requiem For A Heavyweight comes down to the exquisite, tragic site of Louis “Mountain” Rivera (Anthony Quinn) humiliated as a stunt performer whooping around the ring wearing Indian feathers. Juxtapose that with Robert Ryan’s Stoker, who takes a crippling beating but walks away with his chin up, the past behind him and the girl he loves on his arm.
Tragic, bittersweet, inspirational…
How the film ends isn’t up to me. But to strip away the heavy emotional investment made into this character and have me walk out not giving a damn about him isn’t about which fate’s the filmmaker chose, it’s about the execution of that fate.
The Ram deserved better.
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I saw this last Friday and feel much the same. I thought Mickey Rourke was excellent, as well as his supporting cast, but was very disturbed by so much gained having been so quickly lost. I honestly didn’t even want to acknowledge it was really ending that way until people were getting up to leave. My husband feels it was the right fit, I felt sad.
Been waiting more than a week to respond to this!
[spoilers]
First, I never saw the other moview you mentioned, but the ending left me with a “Rocky IV” feeling, with Apollo Creed willing to do “whatever it takes” to continue the fight.
Second, as someone who has followed sports entertainment for years, I ‘got’ a lot of the subtle messages sent out that the average viewer might miss. Things such as why they’re willing to cut themselves with a razor, why they’re willing to take steroids & GH, why whey’re willing to get hooked on pain meds; the glamour of the spotlight when they’re huge and the pop from the crowds whenever they’re in front of large or small audiences. In Rourke’s character, we someone who is still living his life through the lens that is the 80s. He ‘peaked’ during the days of GnR and wants more than anything for those days to return and wishes they’d never ended. (much like many other pro ‘rasslers, by the way) And, by “more than anything”, that means his daughters, his personal well being, his lifestyle – which is reduced to being unafford to pay rent on a single-wide – are set aside so that he can continue to try to recapture that spotlight from so long ago.
Conversely, Tomei’s character – while also hanging on too long – realizes (finally) that there is more to life than what she’s doing and sees Rourke’s character as being a part of that future. Tragically, after a well-intentioned yet still all-too-brief attempt at adjusting to a ‘normal life’, Rourke’s character as finally decided that there is no way that he’ll ever prefer to be “Robin” and that Randy “the Ram” is who he IS. If it means losing his daughter, okay. If it means living in poverty, okay. He has his fans and he’s still “the Ram”, so even if it means losing his life in the ring, that’s his preference. Tomei could let go. In the end, he couldn’t let go of “the Ram”.
Thus, the story is a dark tragedy that mirrors all too well the current state of so many professional wrestlers. They, like the Ram, continue to stay in character well after they’re done with the business. Barry Windham, Greg “the Hammer” Valentine, Ric Flair (newly retired), etc., all keep their hair dyed platinum blonde, just as they did in the ‘old days’. Why? Well, there’s really no other reason than to hang onto the character. Just like “the Ram”, they long for the glory days and wish to hang on.
At first, I didn’t care for the ending. Upon reflection, it really was the only ‘true’ way for the film to maintain the character of “the Ram”, as he’d never give up his career in order to settle down with the girl of his dreams. He’d never have ended the match and found absolution and love; his character never sought out love since his true love was his relationship with the fans & the ‘pop’ that he could bring from them. No, Randy “the Ram” truly would’ve given his life in order to stay “the Ram” instead of settling for being just plain old Robin, again.
Which means that the ending – which, again, I didn’t like when I first saw it – was actually quite fitting. It was the only way for “the Ram” to go out. So, the emotional investment in the character is well placed: you are to pity him, for that is the lifestyle so many wrestlers prefer. It’s not that you shouldn’t give a damn about him, you should ask “why would he do such a ridiculous thing?”. Well, the answer is that he preferred being “the Ram” to being a normal person like Robin did, working in a deli.
Which is probably why Vince McMahon detests this movie, by the way. That fate is what all too many of Vince’s former employees face. Which is why I like the ending more & more each time I think about it. The two tragic characters choose different paths, just as what normally happens in the life of “the Wrestler”.
It was a great movie but just felt incomplete by ending so abruptly..
[MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS]
I MEAN MAJOR SPOILERS.
HAVE I MENTIONED THE SPOILERS ARE MAJOR?
What you’re missing, from the conservative perspective, is the fact that Ram is a Christ figure for the modern world. Cassidy makes a direct allusion to this during a lap dance when she describes to him The Passion of the Christ. She tells Ram that he looks like Christ, to which he replies that Jesus was “one tough dude,” the highest compliment that he knows. The next scene is the hardcore wrestling match with glass, barbed wire and the staple gun, in which he suffers his most enduring wounds.
Ram is like Balthasar, the donkey in Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthasar, a beast of burden suffering the sins of the world. The wrestling matches become ceremonial rituals of suffering, in which he takes on the sins of the audience.
The storyline bears a resemblance to The Last Temptation of Christ. Through modern medical technology, Ram is granted a temporary reprieve from his sacrificial death and tempted with a normal life – a regular job, a potential wife, and family. In the end, he chooses the path to his martyrdom.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s truly a Christian film. But it uses the Christian story similar to the way that Children of Men, for instance, uses the story of Noah.
The only real argument against this interpretation is that the writer and director are both Jewish.:)
I have a completely different take on the ending than John – I found it bleak and depressing, which fit perfectly with the rest of the film. He gives up a shot at a somewhat normal life with Marisa Tomei for another shot at his faded glory.
As for the father-daughter part, I don’t see that it was particularly lame – it seemed a pretty black and white issue for her that her dad took off and is continuing to selfishly screw with her emotions.
The hokey ending would have been him quitting and setting off on a new life with Tomei and reconnecting with his daughter. This ending shows he’s going to continue debasing himself and eventually die alone, sooner rather than later. In other words, it’s the feel-good hit of the winter.
I can’t believe no one’s brought up the real life parallels with Jake “The Snake” Roberts, as documented in “Beyond the Mat”.
I have 1 huge problem with this critique – and that is the the ending. Apparently, the author knows very little about wrestling or the ill-fated careers of wrestlers. [spoiler alert] They live hard and die hard, the list of prematurely dead wrestlers is scary long. That is why this ending is not only poignant but absolutely, resolutely perfect, because this movie is about the reality of wrestling.
SPOILERS BELOW, FOLKS.
Mr. Nolte, my opinion exactly on the inclusion of the Ram’s speech before his rematch with the “Ayatollah”. Watching Randy throughout the entire film up to this moment made it completely unneccessary for him to have to “explain” himself. We already know why he’s back in the ring. Unless Randy did this for the fans in attendance at the match, but we were never given any sort of hint that there was a huge disappointment that he had retired. There were no persistent, pesky calls from his promoter. Then again, the dude did have to use a pay phone. His sign-and-greet showed no fans pleading for him to get back in the ring. Again, it just seemed his explanation was too much “in case you missed the entire movie, here’s why I’m back”. Good film, though.
Ravishing Rick Rude. “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig. Andre the Giant. Yokozuna. Dino Bravo. Owen Hart. “British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith. Brian Pillman. Eddie Guerrero. Louis Spiccoli. Chris Benoit. Renegade. Maddog Mike Bell. Most of the Von Erich family. They’re all dead.
I thought this movie was inspired by the story of Jake “The Snake” Roberts. Either way, Mickey Rourke gave a very powerful performance.
A careerm, if chosen correctly, will allow a person to explore all those possibilities of strength, ability and talent within them. “Randy” acheived his dreams in life and somewhere along the line didn’t notice that it was time to change and grow into a new phase, a new direction and the physical constraints and emotional rewards of wrestling weren’t paying off. But he never got off that bus. When he finally does, it seems like its way past too late. But of course, we all know that it’s not.
For myself, I do agree that Randy deserved a better ending. I deserved it for watching and making a true emotional investment in the character and his problems. What Hollywood doesn’t get is that a good ending doesn’t have to be artsy or bs metaphysical. It also doesn’t have to be perfect. But like Mickey Rourke, and Randy, I like to see the fallen hero win on occassion.
The film is what it is and I’m not after tampering with content. I liked it a lot. But I could have used a conclusion. And one without the death doing what you love bit.
The ending was fitting in that Randy was already a dead man.
With his only hope for salvation arriving too late to save him he died doing the only thing that brought him happiness.
[...] of the ”Wrestler” review readers responded to my complaint about that film’s climax with, ”[t]he hokey ending [...]
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yeah, I agree with you. Finally saw The Wrestler…and whereas I enjoyed it, and love Rourke in it, I thought the ending was cliche-enigmatic…and the address to the crowd was to much exposition that betrayed the up-til-then tragi-comedy of the piece. But I still dug it.
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