Number Two - THE WRESTLER
No doubt everyone has heard some mention about the return of Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofski's The Wrestler. However, as powerful and important Rourke's performance is to the movie, the film as a whole seems to be overshadowed by this. The Wrestler is the most gripping and powerful American movie of the year and this is due in part to the rest of the cast, including Marisa Tomei and Evan Racheal Wood, and the brilliant film making. Helped in part by its semi-biographical nature, the movie seems almost like a documentary, following a broken man as he tries to assemble the pieces of his once great life.
Rourke plays Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a washed up professional wrestling star struggling to get by. He works at a grocery store deli by day and moonlights as his wrestling personality in small arenas before smaller crowds. Randy frequents a strip joint because he has feelings for Tomei, a topless dancer who helps him try to reconnect with his estranged daughter after Randy is struck down by a heart attack. The story mirrors Rourke's own career, which he managed to flush down the toilet a decade or so ago with drug and sex addictions and a boxing match that destroyed his handsome face. Randy, much like Rourke, seems unable to exist and alienated in the real world and feels more at ease as his celebrity persona than as his vulnerable, real self.
The Wrestler is raw and gritty and there are scenes of great emotional and visual intensity. Extreme wrestling matches fought with barbwire and plate glass and staple guns are shown in their entirety, not skipping over one bloody detail. The images are horrific and stomach-turning but penetrate the depth of what Rourke's character will go through to earn some money and keep his reputation alive. He pulls no punches in scenes where he tries desperately to reconnect with his daughter and exist in a world that does not take him seriously. The movie seems unpolished and stripped down, with no fancy camera work or FX, just real action.
The Academy honored both Tomei and Rourke with nominations but failed to see the perfection and vision of the film as a whole, skipping over the contributions writer and director as well. Nods for best picture went instead to more glossy, polished packages like Frost/Nixon and Milk, neither of which can compare to the genuine experience of The Wrestler. Even last year's No Country For Old Men is cartoonish compared to this realistic drama, and it is clear that this film is far too gripping and honest for most audiences. Easily the best American film of the year, nothing else even comes close.
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