The REEL Addict 

On its own, Bruce Springsteen’s song “The Wrestler” is gorgeous with its inherent beautifully sad and melancholic grace, one that doesn’t expand so much as achingly bloom from the simplicity of its music and words. Like the best of Bruce, it aches with men no longer struggling with the circumstances of their life, so much as reconciling themselves with the fact that the struggle - and what it leaves them with - has become their very life and being. The sad grace emerges in the fact that - as much as any man can be - they are okay with it, and will take what they can.

Those of us who have been fortunate enough to see THE WRESTLER - for which Bruce wrote the original song - then know how the elegant song and the elegiac film become perfect, inseparable, co-dependent companions. When it starts playing at the start of the end credits all it does so beautifully on its own just becomes that much more powerful with the context of the film. It hauntingly recalls and encapsulates both memories of the events of the film, as well as its emotions. It represents and enhances the film, serving as a period to pull everything together, which is precisely why come Oscar time, Bruce Springsteen should walk away with another Academy Award.

To hear the song for yourself, check it out here.