Modern Day Slacker

SPOILERS AHOY!!!

I spent some time today watching Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler”. This had to be on of the saddest movies I’ve seen in awhile. What do you do when all your life you did one thing and then…you can’t do it anymore? When you get to that place where you realize you spent your life doing your job and you look around to find no one? Welcome to Randy “The Ram”’s life.

Mickey Rourke plays the crap out of this beat down guy, formerly a huge pro from the 80’s, who only really lives for the crowds and to wrestle. He could easily be one of the saturday morning wrestlers we watched as kids. Now he tours the small halls and gets by with ridiculous amounts of steroids, working in the Acme and selling his merch at old wrestler shows. His heart attack pushes him to look beyond wrestling, to try and salvage some kind of life. This is the most heartbreaking of all. Aronofsky is a fan of the “show don’t tell” school, of which I am a fan. There aren’t any long speeches that try to explain everything. In fact, most of the dialogue isn’t more then a few sentences, and that makes it even more real and totally believable. Yes, I just called a movie about an old wrestler believable.

Maria Tomei is interesting. As Cassidy, the stripper, she walks that line between work and wanting to get to know Ram better and while that could have come off as “the wrestler guy hooks up with the stripper”, it was played more along the lines of “a sad and lonely guy wants to connect and finds a sad mom who has to make serious decisions”. It works on many levels. Evan Rachel Wood as Ram’s daughter Stephanie, well, it was short, sweet, and overall sad, just like most human connections in this flick.

Overall, this tale of failed human connection is one of the best movies I have seen in a really long time. It was a lot more then I expected. Mickey Rourke is so good in this, I hope that he keeps playing complex characters. I just hope he stays away form the collagen, because at certain points it looked like he couldn’t move his lips. Also, if you are a fan of wrestling, or have been in the past, keep a close eye out for lots of old wrestlers and cameos from oddballs such as Eric the midget from The Howard Stern Show.

This flick is totally worth your time and your money. Aronofsky has created a world that is worth watching.