'The Wrestler' Sucks
Posted at 11:30 PM Dec 31, 2008
By Kenny HerzogWARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
After absorbing the hype about Mickey Rourke's Herculean performance in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler (supposedly a mixture of Godfather-period Brando, Rocky-era Sylvester Stallone and Jesus himself) and becoming intrigued by the campy-cum-heartbreaking premise of a has-been pro grappler trying to make good, I finally headed off to the big screen and witnessed Rourke's theater of pain.
And while reviews have brought expectations down to earth, citing the film (accurately) as an ultimately been-there-done-that re-telling of a tried-and-true fallen-warrior saga, nothing could have prepared me for the degree to which The Wrestler sucked. Not even the 35-page manual in my cupholder titled, Preparation Tactics For The Suckage Of The Wrestler.
As for the star of the main event, Rourke is the only aspect of the film that doesn't dwell in heavy-handedness. His performance is anything but showy, and doesn't need to be. Aronofsky lends the picture its poetics with his trademark style of uncomfortably gritty grotesquerie and tragic surrealism. But he and screenwriter Robert Siegel also turn The Wrestler into an exercise in manipulation that puts a stranglehold on your emotional and sensory thresholds. The outcome is predictable from the near get-go, but the filmmaking pair still mercilessly puts viewers through the formulaic paces of the movie's narrative arc.
We're first permitted a glimpse of hope during the mid-flick reconciliation with Robinson's daughter Stephanie (played with believably guarded gusto by Evan Rachel Wood) and near-consummation with stripper muse Cassidy (portrayed with a lack of naturalism distractingly antithetical to Rourke's immersion into Robinson's over-tanned-and-time-battered visage). And we're then subjected to our protagonist's rapid, perversely graceful descent into flatlined self-loathing and, eventually, a uniquely morbid kind of isolated martyrdom.
At times (and par for the course with the rest of his cinematic resume), Aronofsky seems to take pleasure in playing a game of "Will he or won't he subject us to this seemingly inevitable moment of intimately graphic gratuity?" And there are several such scenes in The Wrestler, most notably toward the end during a grocery store hissy fit. It's clear that all of Rourke's bodily harm is intended to illustrate the contrast between his capacity to withstand exterior trauma like a true warrior but become increasingly vulnerable to the toll his life decisions have rendered on his heart and soul.
And at the end of the day, it is Rourke who salvages that purpose, lifting it from the bloody canvas of the mediocre movie around him and resuscitating it with heavily panting humanity. But he shouldn't have been required to put The Wrestler on his shoulders. A worthier picture would have relied less insecurely on its supporting cast to overemphasize Robinson's silent heroism, and would have been significantly less reliant on making the film's 100-plus minutes an almost torture-porn-worthy endurance test.
So for foregoing the opportunity to center the film around its most convincing and magnetic relationships (i.e. Rourke and Wood); disavowing Rourke of the opportunity to make the oft-unbelievable tale of a broken man's redemption feel plausible in his capable--if brittle and mangled--hands; taking itself entirely more seriously than it had to (save a few cheeky insights into the backstage world of amateur wrestling bills); and ultimately providing a theatrical experience that felt almost cruel and unusual in its tactical unpleasantness, I decree The Wrestler to suck.
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