'The Wrestler': Mickey Rourke's Triumph

by Brett Parker

One of the most abused terms in film criticism is when an actor is labeled “the next Marlon Brando.” Usually when a ruggedly handsome actor displays an electrifying mix of vulnerability and intensity, the title is thrown at them like candy. If ever there was an actor who truly deserved this grand title, it was the young Mickey Rourke. Rourke had the exterior of the quintessential tough guy yet had a disarming tenderness and sensitivity embedded into his personality. He spoke in subtle tones, was articulate with his gestures, and when it was time to turn on the intensity, he could make the earth shake. His talents were in full, fascinating force in The Pope of Greenwich Village and Angel Heart, and performances don’t get much cooler than his portrayal of The Motorcycle Boy in Francis Ford Coppola’s grossly underrated Rumble Fish.

I say the young Mickey Rourke because almost everyone knows the unfortunate turn of events the older Mickey Rourke’s career took. As his career was beginning to blossom, so was his arrogance. Rourke’s sense of preparation and professionalism began to deteriorate while his ego inflated to damaging lengths. This reputation exiled him from major Hollywood pictures and into irrelevant dreck such as Double Team and They Crawl. It didn’t help matters that Rourke’s movie star looks began to crumble away due to a short stint in the world of boxing. Although he was washed up and banished to the outskirts, Rourke kept finding work wherever he could, because he was simply and inescapably an actor.

That makes The Wrestler, then, some kind of miracle. The film contains what could in fact be the performance of his career, one that dazzles us with the wonderful talents he displayed in his early career. Rourke fills his character, Randy “The Ram” Robinson, with such heartache, sincerity, and longing that his performance holds a brutal honesty rarely seen in today’s cinema. Indeed, there are so many parallels between the actor and the character that the film can almost be seen as a metaphor for Rourke’s own career.

Randy “The Ram” Robinson was once a giant in the world of professional wrestling. He was a championship wrestler whose pay-per-view match with The Ayatollah (Ernest Miller) broke records and became a thing of wrestling legend. However, aging and carelessness caused Randy to fall out of superstardom and he now lives out his career in an amateur wrestling league that occupies small venues. Night after night, Randy throws his battered body around a ring, taking staged beatings from his opponents and even participating in extreme hardcore matches. One night, Randy suffers a major heart attack that almost kills him. A doctor explains to him that if he attempts to wrestle again, he could in fact die.

After his brush with death, Randy tosses away his wrestling tights and makes an attempt at a normal life. He holds down a job serving meat at a deli counter. He tries to create an affectionate relationship with a sweet stripper named Pam (Marisa Tomei), yet she treats Randy more like a paying customer than someone she cares about. He tries to re-enter the life of his estranged daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), yet she is furious with his absence from her life. Randy has a disastrous time finding success with a newfound life and decides to get back into the ring for one last match. A reunion match between Randy and The Ayatollah is arranged in New York and Randy cannot resist the glory of it, no matter what the consequences.

It’s truly hard to watch this film without noting the parallels between Rourke and his character, Randy “The Ram” Robinson. Both are washed up celebrities continuing their craft in the lower ranks of their business. Both men are walking 80s relics past their prime and yearning for the glory days, before things got messed up. There’s a certain irony when Randy speaks of how the 90s sucked. When Randy gives his final speech to a crowd of fans before his final match, the speech nearly breaks the fabric of the film and appears to be addressing the film audience directly. As Randy speaks of being “washed up” and “doing his thing” despite losing “everything you love,” we feel this is truly Rourke emptying his soul on the silver screen. Rourke and Randy are so aligned with each other that this moment, along with many other ones throughout the film, make it hard to distinguish actor from character.

That’s what makes the performance so great. Who else could’ve made Randy such a realistic force of human emotions? Nicolas Cage was the original choice to play Randy, yet Cage’s performance would’ve lacked the startling identification and genuine anguish Rourke brings to the role. I’ve always been a big fan of Rourke and I really hope he wins the Oscar for this performance, the nomination at this point seeming inevitable. Sure, Sean Penn and Brad Pitt are strong in their flashy Oscar-bait performances, yet Rourke has crafted a rare performance of human honesty worthy of Brando and Mastroianni. This is the stuff cinematic legends are made of.

It would be more than enough if The Wrestler was just a showcase of Rourke’s performance, but the film strives beyond that to also be a revealing look at the world of wrestling. The script by Robert D. Siegel gives us a backstage look at the mechanisms of how a wrestling show is created and performed and how the performers interact with each other. We see Randy and his comrades verbally planning their moves and maneuvers, trying out various props, and trading “medications” with each other. Although wrestling is staged entertainment, the smacks and falls are real thuds to the body that make wrestling a brutal form of sports entertainment. This is strongly felt in a sequence in which an extreme hardcore match is meticulously deconstructed, one in which Randy and his opponent beat each other mercilessly with chairs, staple guns, garbage cans, nails, damn near anything that can cause serious damage. It’s a cringe-inducing sequence, one in which the brutality and pain of the sport can be strongly sensed by every member of the audience. Never before has a fictional film captured the world of wrestling so greatly and accurately as it does here.

The film was directed by Darren Aronofsky and is visually different than anything he’s ever done before. Aronofsky’s films (Pi, Requiem For A Dream, The Fountain) are known for pushing the creative limits of visual cinematic language, usually presented in kinetic editing rhythms. Here he keeps thing surprisingly stripped down and subtle. The film was done on a very small budget (because no major studio wanted to finance a film starring Mickey Rourke) and is shot in a grainy, shaky cam style commonplace with most shoestring indies. Yet this isn’t just a simple minded indie job, Aronofsky is too sophisticated for that. He actually creates an interesting visual scheme by always having the camera follow directly behind Randy, as if stalking a mythic figure. It’s a neat technique; we get to witness everything Randy is experiencing firsthand while always having him in our view.

Asides from his visual creativity, Aronofsky is a director also known for being unflinching and uncompromising in searching for devastating human emotions. He never makes things easy for his characters, or his audience, and isn’t afraid to break both parties’ hearts. Randy isn’t seen as a saint nor is his life the portrait of uplifting inspiration we’d expect it to be. The foundation of the film’s story has drawn comparisons to Rocky, yet Randy is more flawed and lonely than the Italian Stallion; he lacks a chorus line of encouraging friends and, in the end, there is no Adrian waiting in the wings. While Rocky is an underachiever who gets a miraculous shot at the big time, Randy is a burnout heading for a final and deadly blaze of glory.

In the film’s final scene, as Randy stands atop the ropes and prepares his final leap onto the mat, Aronofsky denies us the final outcome of the match. It’s a wise directorial decision, for the point is not Randy’s destination but the fact that in spite of age, relevance, and even mortality, Randy still battles on. The same can be said of Rourke, and it’s supremely satisfying to see that his battles in the acting world have led him to such a glorious performance. While we don’t know where Randy’s great leap takes him, we hope Rourke’s great leap brings him all the way to that stage on Oscar night.