Hi Y’all. I took another long break since my last post. I apologize. This semester is starting off a lot harder than I thought it would…But I’m ready for it! I’m going to fight my way to get as many good grades as I can, and not get too overwhelmed by my jobs and classwork. Now that you know how hard I’ll be working, I should let you know of another fighter. That fighter I speak of is Mickey Rourke’s character Randy “The Ram” Robinson in the award winning film The Wrestler. Though it didn’t win Best Picture at the Golden Globes, Rourke received the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Drama, and is now nominated for a chance at the Oscars. I agree that he did a very fine job in this role, and totally absorbes himself into the character.
Now, the other day I told a coworker of mine that though I liked the film a great amount, that the movie was in the end “just a story of a wrestler.” To that, he replied that that’s like saying that “Forrest Gump was just the story of a mentally challenged person.” That being one of my favorite movies, I retract my statement, and I apologize to that person because I realize that there is much more depth to this film than that.
The film tells the story of Randy “The Ram” Robinson’s life 20 years after his hayday in the prowrestling spotlight. Presently, he works part-time at the grocery store, tans, gets his hair bleached, and works out in his free time, and on the weekends he gets the opportunity to relive his glory days wrestling in front of school gymnasiums filled with at most 100 people. His one love in his life is being in the ring and doing what he does best: puting on a great performance. Though he doesn’t receive the big money that he once earned when he was a younger and more popular wrestler, he is barely able to pay the rent for his trailer home, he still makes sure to keep wrestling an integral part of his life, even scheduling work around the wrestling schedule.
The Wrestler reveals a side of professional wrestling that is usually shielded from the audience. While many are under the assumption that the sport is fake and that no one really gets hurt, we go behind the scenes to see that this isn’t necessarily true. Before matches, the wrestlers plan out their fights and warn each other what moves they are going to do. Just because its planned, though, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt. It takes a true performer to put on these stunts. And now with our age of constant violence in all forms of the media, wrestling has to keep up with this generation of people who want to see more and more blood. In one of the most memorable scenes, we see the pains Ram must take to shock the audience; The Ram even goes so far as to receive shots from a staple gun all over his body.
The emotional aspect doesn’t just stay with the man’s love for the game. We find that Robinson is alone in this world. Though he has friends and past associates from his illustrious career, he has no one to love on a more intimate level. At one point, Robinson had had a daughter named Stephanie, played my Evan Rachel Wood, who had grown up with little of her father’s involvement. Now, Robinson is hoping to reestablish a connection with her. The other person in his life is a stripper named Cassidy, played by Marissa Tomei who is topless nearly the whole movie, that he has a friendly relationship with in a club. He feels a personal connection to her, and is almost to a certain extent possessive over her. Robinson tries to make this relationship more than just a stripper and client exchange, but as Robinson moves along in his life, he finds that it’s a lot harder than he thought to depend on anything but wrestling in his life.
The film is very good and should definitely be seen at least once. Mickey Rourke embodies the role of a down-on-his-luck wrestler, and makes the viewer feel his pain and struggle. Starting this Friday, January 30, The Wrestler will thankfully be playing at Boardman’s Art Theatre.
