Cast

Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

awards

Venice IFF 2008 – Golden Lion, Golden Globes 2009 – best actor in a motion picture (drama), best original song, BAFTA Awards 2009 – best actor, Independent Spirit Awards 2009 – best cinematography, best feature, best male lead, Florida Film Critics Circle Awards 2008 – best actor, best supporting actress

Film description

Like a great athlete aware of his strengths and weaknesses, Darren Aronofsky’s film The Wrestler skillfully uses its assets and downplays the drawbacks. The main strength is the leading role, where Mickey Rourke, once sex symbol now turned archetype of self-destruction, makes a great comeback. Rourke’s plastic surgery-ridden face and burly body are enough to engender awe. He imbues a story about an aging wrestler’s failings outside the ring with classical tragedy gravitas, where off-screen reality underpins fiction.

The sport involved, if we may call wresting that, is a perfect vehicle. For Europeans, wrestling is absurd discipline and Aronofsky perfectly plays its paradoxes. The fights are scripted, punches pulled, and pain performed, but the director shows real pain, blood and wounds. A performance for the screaming mob acquires depth to become a cinematic metaphor (see Roland Barthes’ great essay on the metaphor of wrestling – the film seems to reference it, purposely or not).

The director so skillfully uses Rourke’s girth on the screen that the slightly conventional plot and weak supporting characters fade into the background. The title is clear about whom we should focus on – and the advice is well-taken.

Michał Chaciński