The TV Addict 

The second best film at this year’s festival, Darren Aronofsky’s stunning film about a Hulk Hogan/Randy Savage like wrestler named Randy “The Ram” Robinson, who was once huge in the 80s and has now been reduced to a has-been playing small, local venues, and appearing at pathetically attended fan events, all in the name of struggling to survive on what little fame he can scratch together. Stuck in the past (old Nintendo video games, and hair bands from the 80s), Randy has never left his wrestling identity, insistent on maintaining his phony name, his long blonde dyed hair, his tan, and buying steroids to maintain the body he needs for his profession which simultaneously destroys it. That’s exactly what happens when he suffers a heart attack, and is confronted with forced retirement.

What follows is a poignant account of a man trying to make a come back, not in his profession, but as a human being. Stripped of everything he knows and is, Mickey Rourke’s performance brilliantly conveys a man trying to piece his life together in a world he doesn’t believe gives a shit about him, and one he deliberately avoided till now with the world of wrestling. He reaches out to a long abandoned daughter, he attempts to romance a stripper (a very often naked Marisa Tomei) at a club he frequents often, and tries to find contentment in every day work. He’s a man trying as best as he knows how, all the more so now that he’s faced with deep moments of reflection. He struggles and succeeds, but never quite in the way or the order you expect, making the third at of the film in particular emotionally surprising and not all where one thinks the film is going. It proves to add much greater weight to this sensitive and powerful character study about a man not learning to live again, but rather learning to live different and improved under the worst of circumstances.

THE WRESTLER is undoubtedly a movie you’re going to hear a lot about come Oscar season. If it doesn’t get Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Song nominations, I will eat my hat.