“Mickey Rourke, ‘The Wrestler’” Mickey Rourke, for better or worse, has spent most of his adult life preparing for the role of Randy “The Ram” Robinson in the new film “The Wrestler”. The blending of actor and role is seamless, moving, thrilling and profoundly correct. His work here is more testament than character portrayal, and that is why this low budget, almost-off-the-radar film is an instant classic.
When, after the final credits roll, you walk out of most good movies, you enjoy a feeling of satisfaction. Your ten dollars was well spent. When you walk out of “The Wrestler”, you feel as though you have personally been hit by one of the many body slams that were shown on screen. You have taken a rare journey into another human being’s soul.
In my acting classes, I teach that all humans act to survive. We each pursue different strategies in life, but we identify with the impulse to survive in one another. When a baby is born, the first thing she does is try to live; when a person dies, the last thing she does before dying is try to live. What we have in “The Wrestler” is the final gasp of a man who wants more than anything to live, but who has made just about every wrong choice one could make in life. He has lived on his own terms, and the fruits of that effort are catching up with him in the opening scene.
Just as “Rocky” was a metaphor for the early career of Sylvester Stallone, so too is “The Wrestler” a metaphor for the mid-life career of Mickey Rourke. Speaking only for myself, I admired Rourke’s early acting work, as in, say, “Diner”. He was very organic. But then he went badly off track and began to play out his ragged self-destructive personal life in the press while trashing his own career. He totally quit acting at one point and became a professional boxer. But he was too old to be boxing and wound up having a lot of his bones broken. Then he made a futile attempt at resurrecting his acting career. At his lowest, he was reduced to playing a supporting role in an Enrique Iglesias music video. I don’t like to see anybody self-destruct, and so I turned off to Mr. Rourke. I looked the other way and silently wished him God Speed.
The first I heard of “The Wrestler” was when it was awarded The Golden Lion at the 2008 Venice Film Festival. I took notice but, even considering that award, was inclined to dismiss it simply because of Mickey Rourke. Then I read that Fox had bought the film for $4 million at Sundance, and that audiences were becoming enthusiastic. Still, I resisted. Finally, I watched the trailer on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61-GFxjTyV0) and I was sold. I attended a morning screening in Chicago the day after it opened and was stunned. When I returned home, my wife asked how I liked the movie, and I replied, “It is like getting hit with a sledge hammer.”
“The Wrestler” is set in the world of professional wrestling and, as such, is extremely violent and bloody. If you are the kind of person who can’t get past that, then this is not the flick for you. However, in my view, life itself is often violent and bloody, and we learn nothing about the human condition if we are not willing from time to time to look at that in the light of day.
I should also mention how much my respect for Marisa Tomei went up after seeing “The Wrestler”. This 44-year old actress is up there on the screen playing a stripper/pole dancer, with and without make up. Emotionally and physically, her performance, too, is a raw nerve exposed. This may not be a light-hearted date movie, but it is definitely a rare cinematic experience. I whole-heartedly recommend that every artist see it.
