First Stop Palookaville, Next Stop Death
I actually got around to seeing 2008's
The Wrestler this weekend and I was surprised by how much I liked it.
Perhaps “like” is not the right word to use. After all, the fate of the title character -- a professional wrestler named Randy “The Ram” Robinson -- in this movie is hardly a cheery one and I can hardly accuse the film's director of making your standard feel-good sports epic.
But I found the movie to be very moving, indeed, despite the fact that I don't care much about professional wrestling, Mickey Rourke or the usual Hollywood clichés about lovable fuck-ups leading lives of quiet desperation.
Perhaps the film works for me so much precisely because the film doesn't pretend the title character (played by Mickey Rourke) is a lovable character. At the start of the movie, Randy “The Ram” Robinson is an aging pro who has screwed up big-time over the years and is now starting to reap the consequences of his actions. He's getting too old to successfully wrestle without risking another heart attack, yet he knows little else he can do. Moreover, not only does he not want to quit, he is not sure he is able to quit.
His one steady companion is an aging stripper named Cassidy who is facing the same question as Robinson: how to make a living in a profession with such an obvious expiration date. Cassidy is played by Marisa Tomei and it is a credit to her talent that the relationship between her character and Rourke's seems so convincing, even when it comes to the inevitable shout-out to pop culture: in this case, a set of 80's songs which provokes temporary nostalgia in both Cassidy and Robinson.
Evan Rachel Wood plays Robinson's estranged daughter Stephanie, and she too does a good job with her character, depicting the obvious conflict between hope, despair, anger and indifference which sum up her relationship with her father throughout the movie. In one scene, she gives the impression of obviously wanting to believe her father's attempts at reconciliation. In another, she all too accurately depicts the emotions of one who has been let down by her father once too often and it would be silly to pretend she does not have a point.
In the end, Robinson decides to forgo any attempt to make a go of it in the non-wrestling world and returns to the ring, even though he suspects -- no, knows -- that such an return will most likely to be the death of him.
To the director's credit, he does not shy away from the darker implications of his title character's story arc. Even the one scene toward the end which had the potential to turn into a Hollywood cliché -- the scene in which Cassidy rushes to ringside for one last conversation with Robinson -- ends on an all too logical note.
As does the movie itself.
Labels: Deportistas, Desnudistas, El Luchador, Envejecimiento, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei, Mickey Rourke, Películas Nuevas II
