The Wrestler
Darren Aronofsky is an interesting chap. After watching Requiem for a Dream I was certain he was the next big thing and immediately went out to try and find Pi. I watched it eagerly and then wondered why anyone had ever given him money again. Tales of The Fountain started to circulate and then reviews. I listened to the reviews and put off the watching until I was stuck on a plane with a choice between it and Norbit, a choice which I am still not entirely sure that I made correctly. And I still never want to see Norbit. It was interesting, but in the way that seeing the owner of a low riding Lamborghini hit a speed bump at 60mph is interesting - also painful to watch.
So, we start from low-fi and fairly incomprehensible in Pi, move to a slick, hyper real film in Requiem, and then to an incredibly over produced ‘masterpiece’ in The Fountain. I wasn’t sure what to expect from The Wrestler, but I certainly wasn’t expecting the film that I got.
Coming across from the posters as an almost biographical movie about The Ultimate Warrior (I really would like to hear [name legally changed to] Warrior’s comments on the film. More for the potential for controversy than anything else, as he has put himself up as a worrying figure these days, even when he’s not back in his facepaint and costume), Aronofsky has dropped the glossy sheen of the last two movies and gone for a gritty handheld documentary feel, although the camera stops short of actually being part of the film and it remains a regular narrative.
I won’t say anything about the story, as Slumdog Millionaire has taught me that people even giving you the vaguest of synopses can spoil what would be a glorious reveal otherwise, but the structure of the film is one that intrigues me. For the first chunk of the movie it felt very different – the combination of documentary feel with subject matter worked so well that I was totally immersed in story and loving every second, from opening credits onwards. About a third of the way through it switched gears slightly, with a regular storyline poking its head above the parapet, causing me to realise that this was just a normal movie. That’s not say it’s bad, it’s really not, but it became just a very good film rather than something quite so different as it had been before. It then rumbled towards an ending that I couldn’t call and finished in a way that I liked, which as it approached I was starting to doubt could happen.
The acting is great, with Mickey Rourke already tipped for Oscars with his incredible physical performance. He’s a big man with hands like bunches of parsnips and he lumbers around the screen as if in constant pain, occasionally showing turns of grace that you would not expect. My old movie buddy Todd mailed me the other day, commenting that he wasn’t sure whether he was playing an old wrestler, a broken down actor, just himself or all three at the same time. It’s worth watching for him alone, and the film is him alone quite a lot of the time.
Being a former wrestling fan, especially a fan of how it actually works (it is partly choreographed, and the outcomes are part of storylines and are drawn out in advance, but that just means that every fight is a spectacle and pure entertainment, if you are entertained by grown men seemingly beating each other into a pulp), this film appeals to me as a look behind the scenes of that industry, but even without that extra kick it is an impressive movie and one that I thoroughly recommend.
However, we need to keep an eye on Aronofsky – like the Star Trek franchise’s secret ‘rule’ he’s so far delivering on the even numbered movies. This wouldn’t worry me much if it wasn’t for the fact he has two new films lined up already: Firstly, the maybe bad one, Marky Mark in The Fighter – this doesn’t concern me all that much but I wish them luck – and secondly, the good one according to the ‘rule’, the 2010 scheduled remake of RoboCop. I hope the rule holds, but I sit and wait with caution…
The problem I have now is that I’ve watched three films this year, The Killing, Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler, and the next one on my pile at home is Shadow of a Doubt. After those four excellent movies 2009 is really going to have to deliver if my film appreciation isn’t going to fall rapidly towards the floor. I’m almost tempted to go to see Bride Wars a number of times just to bring my expectations down to a sensible level. However, I don’t think things require such drastic measures yet.
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Posted: January 22nd, 2009 under blog.