So we all know now that Sean Penn won the Academy Award for the Best Actor in a Leading role this year, but I’d like to write about another nominee who I thought deserved to get it that is Mickey Rourke for his exemplary performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler.
The Wrestler is a drama about an aging professional wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, decades past his prime, who now barely gets by working small wrestling shows and as a part-time grocery store employee. As he faces health problems that may end his wrestling career for good, he attempts to come to terms with his life outside the ring: by working full time at the grocery store, trying to reconcile with the daughter he abandoned in childhood and forming a closer bond with a stripper he has romantic feelings for. He struggles with his new life and an offer of a high-profile rematch with his 1980s arch-nemesis, The Ayatollah, which may be his ticket back to stardom.
The story at onset seems like the stuff any other sports/drama movie is made of. You sense, with somewhat of a dread, where all this is headed; but whatever The Wrestler is, you feel pretty sure it isn’t Rocky. The movie gives us a portrait of a man who has screwed up his life, and makes us resigned to the idea that we’re going to have to watch him screw up what’s left of it. While other films and film makers fail to see the obvious glory and resurrection of a fallen idol, Aronofsky does no such thing. He drags us through the pain, quiet heartbreak and dubious noisy triumphs as Ram steels himself and his buffed but disintegrating body for an ill-advised, delusional return to the wrestling ring. And grueling, gladiatorial rematches that many will find difficult not to cringe through, but will likely be too captivated by the sheer, if at times gigantic grit and determination of this insistent loser.
The real star of the enterprise is undoubtedly Mickey Rourke. The manner in which he embraces and delivers an excruciating performance so full of misery and mutilation because it's the sole source of remaining dignity and public admiration for this fiercely dedicated glutton for punishment, Rourke, is nothing less than extraordinary. And by the time he's taken us through the self-inflicted mind-numbing ordeals to the barbaric procedures of professional wrestling involving applied barbed wire, staple guns, ashcan bashing, bug spray and coronaries, one is pretty much vicariously beat.
Then there's also a tender and sad sidebar as Ram bares his bruised heart to an aging pole dancer (Marisa Tomei) at a local strip joint. As Aronofsky keeps us on our toes wondering whether she's the real deal or stringing the infatuated lonely guy along, we're just as clueless. Tomei performs with great élan bringing an alarming sense of alacrity and frankness to her role providing the perfect foil for Rourke’s tormented and bruised psyche.
If anything, The Wrestler exposes the troublesome psychological, let alone physical damage of often destructive notions of masculinity in this culture of instant gratification that seep out of all those superhero fantasies crowding the screens. And at the same time adding to that list of survival essentials - food and shelter - the necessity of basic dignity and self-respect, even at a potentially fatal cost.
What adds to it all is the similarities between Rourke and his character. Apparently drawing from his own life as a recognized actor who at the peak of his professional career made some disastrous choices (turning down roles such as Tom Cruise’s in Rain Man and many more) and entering the professional boxing arena in 1991 to subsequently retire in 1995. His own personal graph almost mirrors the character he plays which adds so much more to the already poignant and powerhouse of a performance.
To sum up, the first thing that came to my mind after the movie was if Rourke doesn't grab an Oscar, there is no justice on this planet, simply for crushing the collective audience soul with the often wordless torment of this abrasive but brutally wounded creature.
