A Wild Bunch (France) presentation of a Protozoa Pictures (U.S.) production. (International sales: Wild Bunch, Paris.) Produced by Scott Franklin, Darren Aronofsky. Executive producers, Vincent Maraval, Agnes Mentre, Jennifer Roth. Co-producer, Mark Heyman. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Screenplay, Robert Siegel.
Randy "the Ram" Robinson - Mickey Rourke Cassidy/Pam - Marisa Tomei Stephanie - Evan Rachel Wood
Talk about comebacks. After many years in the wilderness and being considered MIA professionally, Mickey Rourke, just like the washed-up character he plays, attempts a return to the big show in "The Wrestler." Not only does he pull it off, but Rourke creates a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances. An elemental story simply and brilliantly told, Darren Aronofsky's fourth feature is a winner from every possible angle, although it will require deft handling by a smart distributor to overcome public preconceptions about Rourke, the subject matter and the nature of the film. Co-produced by Wild Bunch in France, where Rourke has retained his most loyal following through thick and thin, this is nonetheless an American picture through and through, beginning with the way it strongly evokes the gritty working-class atmosphere of numerous '70s dramas. Spare but vital, and with the increasingly arty mannerisms of Aronofsky's previous work completely stripped away, the film has the clarity and simplicity of a great Hemingway short story -- there's nothing extraneous, the characters must face up to their limited options in life, and the dialogue in Robert Siegel's superior script is inflected with the poetry of the everyday.
All the same, for the first few minutes one could be excused for imagining the film was directed by Belgium's Dardenne brothers, as ace lenser Maryse Alberti's camera relentlessly follows around aging wrestler Randy "the Ram" Robinson (Rourke) from the back, concentrating on his long, dyed-blond hair and hulking body before fully revealing his mottled, puffy face. This guy is 20 years past his prime, but he's still in pretty good shape and aims to get back on top on the pro wrestling circuit.
Ram seems to have always been a big fan favorite -- he is one of their own, a fearless bruiser the white working stiffs can root for against the assorted freaks, ethnic interlopers and outright villains in this macho cartoon universe. A beguiling early scene that firmly sets the movie on its tracks shows an event's muscled participants, all warmly easygoing and chummy with one another, pairing up and discussing what moves they'll make in their matches. A similar later scene has one of the wrestlers offering Ram his choices from a laundry list of dubious-sounding pharmaceuticals.
Apart from the momentary camaraderie of his ringmates, however, Ram is alone in life. At the outset, he's also penniless, locked out of his dismal trailer home until he can pay up. He works occasionally, lugging cartons at a big-box store, and his tough-guy posture is adored by small kids, but he's got no friends and nothing to show for his strenuous efforts.
From time to time, he has a drink at a gentlemen's club, where he visits aging stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), whose days of using her body for her livelihood are similarly numbered. After getting a load of some of Ram's battle scars, Cassidy, whose real name is Pam, tells him he ought to see "The Passion of the Christ." "They threw everything at him," she says, to which Ram guesses Jesus must have been a "tough dude." Ram must confront his mortality after the film's second wrestling match, a bout so gruesome and barbarous it will force some people to look away.
Assessing his options while recovering, Ram decides to gently step up his relationship with Pam, as well as to try to reconnect with his daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), whom he hasn't seen in years. Both women have good reasons not to allow such a damaged man into their intimate lives, but even their most tentative signals of openness give Ram reason to hope for a new chapter in his life. His encounters with them are sensitively written and acted with impressive insight and delicacy, and Ram has one monologue in which he lays his feelings bare to Stephanie at a deserted old Jersey boardwalk -- "I deserve to be alone," he admits -- that is so great, one wishes it were longer.
After a stint at a deli counter that is the source of more good character humor, Ram decides to unretire and fight in a 20th-anniversary rematch of one of his most legendary bouts, "Ram vs. Ayatollah." Despite the hoopla, the way it all plays out is as far from "Rocky Balboa" as one could get, resulting in a climax that is exhilarating, funny and moving.
Shot in rough-and-ready handheld style, pic atmospherically reeks of low-rent lodgings, clubs, American Legion halls, shops and makeshift dressing rooms on the Eastern seaboard in winter (it locationed in New Jersey and Philadelphia). Stylistically, it's agile, alert and most interested in what's going on in the characters' faces.
And that is a lot. Physically imposing at 57, with a face that bespeaks untold battering and alteration, Rourke is simply staggering as Ram. The camera is rarely off him, and one doesn't want it to be, so entirely does he express the full life of this man with his every word and gesture. Ram's life has been dominated by pain in all its forms, but he's also devoted it to the one thing he loves and excels at, so he asks for no sympathy; he may have regrets, but no complaints.
As vibrant -- and as naked -- as she was in last year's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," Tomei is in top, emotionally forthright form as she charts a life passage similar to Ram's, if much less extreme. Once her character stops stonewalling her father and hears him out, Wood provides a fine foil for Rourke in their turbulent scenes together. The many supporting thesps, especially the wrestling world habitues, are richly amusing and salt-of-the-earth.
More than one option(Person) Scott Franklin Voice, Production Assistant, Associate Producer (Person) Scott Franklin Location Manager, Production Assistant, Production SecretaryMore than one option(Person) Jennifer Roth Assistant Director, Assistant Production Coordinator, Executive Producer (Person) Jennifer Roth Assistant Editor (Person) Jennifer Roth Producer (Person) Jennifer Roth More than one option(Film) Pehlivan (Film) The Wrestler Billy Robinson, James Westman (Film) The Wrestler Camera (Technicolor, widescreen), Maryse Alberti; editor, Andrew Weisblum; music, Clint Mansell; music supervisors, Jim Black, Gabe Hilfer; production designer, Timothy Grimes; art director, Matthew Munn; set decorator, Theo Sena; costume designer, Amy Westcott; sound (Dolby Digital), Ken Ishii; assistant director, Richard Graves; casting, Mary Vernieu, Suzanne Smith-Crowley. Reviewed at CAA screening room, Los Angeles, Sept. 2, 2008.(In Venice Film Festival -- competing; Toronto Film Festival -- Gala Premieres; New York Film Festival -- closer.) Running time: 109 MIN.
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Posts: 29359 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
A positive review for the film and rave for Mickey Rourke from THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER...
Film Review: The Wrestler Bottom Line: Requiem for a bleached-blond heavyweight as Mickey Rourke delivers a tour de force performance By Stephen Farber Sep 4, 2008
"The Wrestler" Venice Film Festival, In Competition
Indie film darling Darren Aronofsky stumbled with his most recent movie, "The Fountain," but he is back on track with "The Wrestler," which had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and is seeking distribution.
Bolstered by a career-best performance from Mickey Rourke and outstanding work by Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, the film could nab audience interest, especially if Rourke's portrayal generates the awards fever that greeted Ellen Burstyn's turn in Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream."
Rourke plays a one-time wrestling star, Randy the Ram, still hustling 20 years past his prime. The strongest scenes are the opening sections that simply delineate Ram's daily routines. He continues to perform in low-rent arenas, and the film does a fine job revealing the mixture of fakery and bruising physical assaults that are part of the wrestling game. Ram can barely pay his rent, perhaps because he still spends money on his appearance -- dyeing his long locks, visiting a tanning salon and relying on steroids to stay in shape. This sharp slice of life is not quite enough to sustain a movie, and so writer Robert Siegel has come up with a plot that hits too many predictable notes. When Ram suffers a heart attack, he tries to make changes in his life, reaching out to a tough-as-nails stripper (Tomei) and to his estranged daughter (Wood).
Although the film teeters on the brink of sentimentality, it never topples into the slush, and this is a tribute to the rigorous direction as well as the astringent performances. Still, there are mawkish moments: When Rourke and Wood visit an abandoned beachside emporium, a tear trickles down his cheek as he pleads for her love. "Wrestler" oscillates between hard-edged naturalism and stock melodrama but ends on an understated note of melancholy that seems just right.
Rourke dispenses with all vanity to plumb the depths of this well-meaning but severely damaged man. Tomei delivers one of her most arresting performances, again without any trace of vanity. Wood's part is smaller, but she captures the scalding anger of a woman neglected for most of her life. The supporting players add to the authenticity of the atmosphere. That authenticity is the hallmark of the production, with vivid cinematography and set design.
Ram might be the ultimate loser, but Rourke scores a winning tour de force.
Production: Protozoa Pictures, Wild Bunch. Cast: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, Mark Margolis, Todd Barry, Wass Stevens, Judah Friedlander, Ernest Miller. Director: Darren Aronofsky. Screenwriter: Robert Siegel. Producer: Scott Franklin. Executive producers: Vincent Maraval, Agnes Mentre, Jennifer Roth. Director of photography: Maryse Alberti. Production designer: Tim Grimes. Music: Clint Mansell. Costume designer: Amy Westcott. Editor: Andrew Weisblum. No rating, 110 minutes.
Posts: 29359 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Would "Casablanca" be cherished if it had starred Ronald Reagan, as originally intended, and not Humphrey Bogart? Is it possible to conceive of "There Will Be Blood" without Daniel Day-Lewis in the leading role? The miracle and mystery of perfect casting came to mind at the Toronto film festival as I sat alongside 580 enthralled viewers witnessing the resurrection of Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky's gritty, deeply affecting "The Wrestler." To say this is a great comeback for an actor whose talent was exceeded only by his self-destructiveness is obvious. But this was a kind of harmonic convergence of player and part that happens once in a blue moon—the actor vanishing so completely inside a role that our sense of his "real" identity is permanently altered.
Rourke plays Randy (the Ram) Robinson, a Gorgeous George-type pro wrestler still mixing it up decades past his prime. He looks half human, half Frankenstein monster, his scarred, steroid-pumped body roasted a golden brown in tanning booths and his mottled face swollen by years of abuse. The crowds in the third-rate arenas have thinned, but he still lives for their roar of approval. He lives in terror of being a has-been, and when he suffers a heart attack and collapses after a brutal bout, his doctors tell him he must hang up his tights or die.
Another actor could have played this wreck for easy pathos—a sad-sack giant in decline. We've seen that act before. But Rourke, underplaying beautifully, gives him a tough, tender humor that skirts the usual clichés of aging gladiators that go back beyond "Requiem for a Heavyweight" all the way to Wallace Beery. There's none of the actorish self-indulgence, that taint of narcissism, that sometimes marred Rourke's earlier performances. It's hard at times to even imagine this is the same guy who was the Hot New Thing in "Diner" and "Rumble Fish," his brooding intensity evoking the usual James Dean references, or the lounge lizard who specialized in soft-core erotica ("9 ½ Weeks" and "Wild Orchid"). Rourke, macho man extraordinaire, disparaged the acting life for its suggestion of "femininity" and took up a boxing career to shore up his self-esteem. He seems to have poured all those demons into this part and emerged with a new sense of himself as an actor. When screen acting is this pure and simple, it doesn't look like acting at all.
I saw "The Wrestler" the day after seeing another electrifying acting moment in Toronto—in a documentary that was about performance and the casting process. "Every Little Step" is a movie about the creation of Michael Bennett's musical "A Chorus Line," and it follows several aspiring actor/dancers as they audition for the 2006 Broadway revival of the show. A young Asian-American actor named Jason Tam walks into the rehearsal room to read for the part of Paul, the gay chorus boy. And suddenly the movie we're watching is transformed by a performance of such raw emotional honesty that it reduced the seasoned director of the revival to tears—and produced goose bumps throughout the audience in Toronto. He got the part on the spot. Here was the magic of perfect casting unfolding before our eyes: when it's right, no thinking is involved—it hits you in the gut. Kind of like a Randy the Ram body blow.
Annihilation and resurrection are the twin axes upon which The Wrestler turns, the former found in the bruised-and-battered pro wrestler at its center, and the latter in that role's triumphant revitalization of Mickey Rourke's long-tarnished career. Rourke is Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a golden-maned '80s hero of the squared circle who, 20 years removed from his halcyon days battling the evil Ayatollah in Madison Square Garden, has now gone to seed, struggling to earn enough cash on the local wrestling circuit to keep the manager of a trailer park from locking him out of mobile house and home. He's an aged Rocky Balboa by way of Hulk Hogan, too old to grapple and also to change, and Darren Aronofsky's follow-up to The Fountain proves, on a purely narrative level, something of a conventional you-can't-teach-an-old-dog-new-tricks saga, charting Randy's life on the margins with a raft of conventions and clichés common to that sports subgenre in which an ex-titan gives it one last go round. Yet if familiarity abounds, Aronofsky's attention to detail, his potent evocation of milieu and character, nonetheless invigorates his straightforward material in a manner almost as quietly devastating as Rourke's broken-down soulfulness—a raw mishmash of regret, guilt, shame and pride—as a gladiator determined to stay true, damn the consequences, to his brutal, injurious personal code.
In its intimate close-ups of flesh sliced by razors and pierced by glass, The Wrestler shrewdly politicizes Randy's ripped (and ripped-apart) frame, an economic commodity which must by any means necessary—including those that are deleterious (pain killers, steroids)—be maintained. For Randy, upholding an outward appearance of superhuman health, strength, youth (via blond hair dye, or anabolic supplements) is paramount, even as such goals become, at his age, increasingly arduous, a tension reflected in his profession's exaltation of both peerless, mammoth physiques and their systematic demolition. The drama Randy and his cohorts perform may be choreographed, but the film's images of gashes being stitched, staples being removed from backs, and scar tissue pockmarking biceps acutely conveys the severe physical toll entailed by Randy's tights-clad, supposedly "fake" theatrics. Here as in Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, Aronofsky remains fascinated by humanity's capacity for self-mutilation in the pursuit of a cherished dream. His close-proximity immersion into Randy's in-ring violence and backstage recovery sessions—such as when medical treatment of his gruesome injuries instigates cross-cutting flashbacks to the brutal acts that produced them—results in gritty panoramas of corporeality damaged in the service of attaining stardom or, at least, base financial sustenance.
Working with cinematographer Maryse Alberti, Aronofsky shoots in grainy blacks and overcast tones, his run-down New Jersey locales mirroring (as do hair-metal cuts from Cinderella and RATT) the stuck-in-the-'80s obsolescence and bone-deep sorrow of Randy and single-mother stripper Cassidy (a superb Marisa Tomei), a kindred past-her-prime spirit (and exploiter of body for profit) whom he fancies. Eschewing The Fountain's hyper-stylized poeticisms, his direction exhibits an economic precision typified by Dardennes-ish tracking shots from behind Randy, a visual schema that suggests how the past (and the craving for audience attention, here embodied by us viewers) tenaciously follows him. Moreover, Aronofsky and screenwriter Robert Siegel pepper their film with casual, often bleakly amusing particulars that facilitate plausibility, from their depiction of dreary autograph-signing events, to the blasé use of insider terms ("heel," "face"), to the revelation that Randy's real name is Robin, a sly allusion to Hulk Hogan's femme birth moniker Terry. With a sober humanism reminiscent of John Huston's Fat City, The Wrestler poignantly submerges itself in the nooks and crannies of sports' minor leagues, even as its traditional narrative arc—Randy risks life and limb for autumnal glory, woos Cassidy, and, in the film's clunkiest subplot, reconnects with estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood)—pushes slightly too hard with Christ-like undertones that imagine Randy sacrificing himself for our sinful entertainment.
Randy's is an existential quest for self-definition sought through the pain of a folding chair to the forehead, and Rourke—whose own fall from '80s grace included a professional boxing stint and significant reconstructive surgery—doesn't so much portray his protagonist as dredge him up from deep within his weathered-granite torso. His mug seemingly chiseled with a jackhammer, Rourke communicates, through guttural intensity streaked with remorse, the physical and spiritual weight of dashed hopes and predetermined doom. Omnipresent is the sense that wrestling is all Randy knows, and yet a vocation that will inevitably reward his devotion with disability—making him victim to the same canes, wheelchairs and colostomy bags spied on former comrades—and, afterward, death. As in the rebellious disgust that contorts Cassidy's face during a mesmerizing final pole-dance routine, there's defiant sadness in the lines of Rourke's gnarled visage, and aching weariness in both his shaky movements outside of the ring and labored (if still sufficiently agile) efforts within. Eventually hampered by a traitorous ticker that relegates him to humble supermarket deli counter duty, Randy ultimately refuses to betray himself, and it's there, in Randy's resigned understanding and acceptance that a life predicated on self-destruction can only end one way, that The Wrestler ultimately locates its measure of graceful nobility.
Posts: 29359 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
With critics drawing parallelism between Rourke and last year's winner Day-Lewis, and throwing around terms like "perfect casting," am I the only one here who thinks Rourke could end up taking home the darn thing?
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---- OSCAR FYC: Best Picture - "Up" Best Actor - Michael Stuhlbarg, "A Serious Man" Best Actress - Saoirse Ronan, "Lovely Bones" Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz, "Basterds" Best Original Screenplay - "Up"
Posts: 2248 | Location: Right behind you. | Registered: December 07, 2007
Originally posted by Dr. McPhearson: With critics drawing parallelism between Rourke and last year's winner Day-Lewis, and throwing around terms like "perfect casting," am I the only one here who thinks Rourke could end up taking home the darn thing?
I dunno... some Academy members may have been offended by Rourke's renouncing the acting profession as "feminine," i.e., not masculine enough for man's work.
Although on the plus side, Rourke did call Tom Cruise a "c*nt" for criticizing Brooke Shields' use of meds to combat postpartum depression.
Originally posted by Dr. McPhearson: With critics drawing parallelism between Rourke and last year's winner Day-Lewis, and throwing around terms like "perfect casting," am I the only one here who thinks Rourke could end up taking home the darn thing?
I think he will dominate the critics' awards but believe Frank Langella, a grand old man of the theatre with a long history in film too, will win the Oscar. I see Rourke taking the LA, NY and National Society of Film Critics best actor awards with Langella only winning best actor from the National Board of Review but still winning the Oscar.
Posts: 29359 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
I heard about some of that, A. DeWitt. But in similiarity (though not quite as much), didn't both Dustin Hoffman and Sean Penn both go through stages of calling Oscar "nothing more than a beauty contest," "not gauge by talent," and so on? I was told that Hoffman still felt that way when he won for Kramer Vs. Kramer; same goes for George C. Scott during Patton. But maybe I heard wrong.... Either way, it might show that Oscar might give its awards to the best performances, even if it spites the performers themselves.
Pacinofan, I thought that too. But when watching the trailer, I just didn't get the Langella vibe that he reportedly had on Broadway. Maybe they saved the best scenes for the film.... I'll definitely be getting tickets to that movie, if not only to see the two leading men battle their wits during those interview scenes.
---- OSCAR FYC: Best Picture - "Up" Best Actor - Michael Stuhlbarg, "A Serious Man" Best Actress - Saoirse Ronan, "Lovely Bones" Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz, "Basterds" Best Original Screenplay - "Up"
Posts: 2248 | Location: Right behind you. | Registered: December 07, 2007
The reviews for Rourke are outstanding. Surely, he'll be swept up in precursor love.
However, I hate to be pessimistic, but I don't expect him to win the Oscar. Rourke is not liked in Hollywood and as we saw with Eddie Murphy last year, that's a problem.
Now if Rourke plays nice during the precursor season then he may very well take the Oscar.
Reviews for Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood are also strong. I bet Tomei gets another nomination. Not sure about Wood, though.
A mediocre review for the film and a rave for Mickey Rourke from Stephanie Zacharek in SALON...
Oct. 10, 2008 | Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" is a blunt, effective picture, which isn't quite the same as saying it's a good one. Aronofsky leapt onto the scene, an indie wunderkind, with the 1998 film "Pi." His 2000 follow-up, "Requiem for a Dream," about drug addicts poised to slip off the edge, may have been essentially a high-toned exploitation movie, but at least Aronofsky's dazzling, if somewhat gimmicky, effects came wrapped around a core of real emotion. In 2006, Aronofsky seemed to have lost it all with his New Age fever dream "The Fountain," a glum fantasy in which the Tree of Life plays a central role. (It's at least got more life than the movie's misused star, Hugh Jackman.)
So "The Wrestler" -- which closes the New York Film Festival on Sunday -- is a comeback of sorts for Aronofsky. That's fitting because, with it, he has also fashioned a comeback for Mickey Rourke, who gives an astonishing performance as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a nearly washed-up wrestling star who had his heyday during the 1980s and has been struggling ever since. Randy lives in a trailer in New Jersey (at least when he's not locked out of it by his landlord for failing to pay the rent); he works part time at a grocery store, where he has to suffer the sarcastic zingers slung by his manager (played by stand-up comedian Todd Barry). On the weekends, he treks out to various school gyms and two-bit auditoriums to compete with other wrestlers -- although "compete" may not be the most accurate word. Among the finest moments in "The Wrestler" are some of the early ones, when we see Randy before a match, working out the night's moves with his fellow athletes (and once you see the hell these guys put their bodies through, you'll recognize that they are athletes). To give the audience the most exciting show possible, this brotherhood of bruisers decides which headlocks to throw in, determines when to do so and discusses the use of various props such as plate-glass windows and staple guns.
Some pretty rough stuff goes on in that ring, and Aronofsky doesn't flinch from showing it to us. In one sequence that's equal parts clever and cheap, he shows us the aftermath of a particularly brutal match (a victory for Randy), leaving us to believe we've been spared the gory details. Then he flashes back, intercutting highlights from the match -- this is when that staple-gun business comes in -- with shots of Randy's numerous wounds being sewn up and bandaged.
In between those scrappy, bone-crunching matches, Aronofsky, working from a script by Robert D. Siegel, delivers a fairly predictable, sentimental drama. As Randy faces the end of this career, he looks to reconcile with his estranged daughter, Stephanie (played, with far too much sulkiness, by Evan Rachel Wood), and woos the stripper he has long had a crush on, a flinty vixen whose stage name is Cassidy. (She's played by Marisa Tomei, who manages to present us with a moving, three-dimensional character, despite the fact that the picture gives her little to do.)
Aronofsky pulls all the usual strings in "The Wrestler." But in the end the movie works, maybe because the best things about it are things that Aronfsky isn't even conscious of. Aronofsky tapped Rourke for the role, making it clear that he wasn't going to put up with any of the actor's usual shenanigans. Rourke has been working fairly steadily over the past 20 years, but mostly -- with the possible exception of Robert Rodriguez's "Sin City" -- in movies no one has seen. Rourke has freely admitted that his partying hasn't had the greatest effect on his career, and Aronofsky made it plain that he was going to work Rourke, hard.
Whatever Aronofsky did -- or didn't -- do, Rourke's performance comes off beautifully. "The Wrestler" may not be the "best" Aronofsky movie in any technical sense. But the director clearly feels a great deal of tenderness toward his lead character, without ever emasculating him, and Rourke's performance blossoms and thrives within that affectionate framework. Rourke's face looks a little strange: He appears to have had some plastic surgery, which has made his features look both a little too fine and a little too blurred, compared with the Rourke we used to know. But that face hasn't lost any of its expressiveness. Rourke's performance will be praised, rightly enough, for the way he pushes his characterization of Randy right over the edge of our expectations. But what I love most about Rourke's performance are the small gestures, the little things he does probably without even thinking. The way, for example, Randy delicately places his hearing aid (this guy has clearly sustained so many injuries over the course of his career, you wonder how any of his parts still work) on the bedside table in his trailer, before going to sleep.
Like most great performances, Rourke's is the sum of a million little parts. There's the way Randy's face lights up when, trying to buy a surprise present for Stephanie, he seizes upon a shiny satin baseball jacket with an "S" embroidered on it. We already know his no-nonsense daughter would never wear this hideous garment. But Randy thinks the jacket is perfect, not just because it has her initial on it, but because it's the kind of flashy stagewear he gravitates toward himself. Rourke renders this fairly complicated example of dadthink with just the right mix of cluelessness and love. It's just one place in "The Wrestler" where Randy's meaty mug -- beaten down more by life than by anything that has happened in the ring -- tells us more about his character than a dozen lines of dialogue might. It's impossible to pin down what makes that beat-up face so beautiful. Aronofsky, to his credit, knew what becomes a legend most.
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Posts: 29359 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Originally posted by pacinofan: ...from Stephanie Zacharek in SALON...
But the director clearly feels a great deal of tenderness toward his lead character, without ever emasculating him, and Rourke's performance blossoms and thrives within that affectionate framework.
Well, thank Jeebus Rourke's masculinity remains intact, we all know how touchy he is about that effeminate acting thing, although I like the part about him blossoming.
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Originally posted by pacinofan: A positive review for the film and a rave for Mickey Rourke from Stephanie Zacharek in SALON...
Oct. 10, 2008 | Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" is a blunt, effective picture, which isn't quite the same as saying it's a good one.
??? You may wish to revise your intro, pacinofan—I think you missed the part where the reviewer calls it a "fairly predictable, sentimental drama."
quote:
But the director clearly feels a great deal of tenderness toward his lead character, without ever emasculating him, and Rourke's performance blossoms and thrives within that affectionate framework.
Well, thank Jeebus Rourke's masculinity remains intact, although I like the part about him blossoming.
Whoops! Just skimmed that review. Changed the intro to "mediocre review" rather than "positive".
Posts: 29359 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
A merely good review for the film but a rave for Mickey Rourke from Anthony Lane in THE NEW YORKER...
For some years, Mickey Rourke was just about my favorite movie star. This was not an easy stance to take. The body of the man’s work was dismayingly thin, and the body of good work, from “Rumble Fish” onward, could be counted on the knuckles of one fist. As for the body of the man, it swelled from taut and slender to something so bulbous and spongiform that those of us who had thrilled to Boogie, his ****y romancer in “Diner,” could only wince and look away. Yet I insist: there was a time when Rourke demanded to be looked at, catching and holding your eye no less grippingly than the young De Niro. Sweetness and menace were folded up in him—in the way that he angled himself at the world, as if both sure of his place within it and, deeper down, afraid that it might still spit him out. Hence the voice: never a bellow or a screech, nor yet a Brando-haunted mumble, but the soft croon of a conspirator; remember him as the arsonist for hire in “Body Heat,” forcing his employers to lean in close lest they miss his wicked meaning. That whisper of secrecy remained in Stanley White, with his stiff gray hair, his long coat, and his vows of judicial vengeance. Stanley was the cop whom Rourke played in “Year of the Dragon,” and everything about the project shouted overkill: script by Oliver Stone, direction by Michael Cimino, and a racial attitude that was designed to rile. But there was Rourke, holding steady at the core of the storm.
And now the voice is back. In “The Wrestler,” directed by Darren Aronofsky, Rourke is Robin Ramzinski, known to his admirers as Randy (the Ram) Robinson. The body is now a glistening mound of bruised and damaged goods, and the quiff of Stanley White has been replaced by a mop of ropy blond extensions that you could wipe the floor with. Twenty years ago, as the opening credits show, Randy was a star on the wrestling circuit, but the film follows him as he burns away. He lives in a trailer in New Jersey, except that, right now, he doesn’t; the landlord has locked him out for not paying the rent. Randy joshes with the local kids, and plays Nintendo with one of them—“a really old game,” according to the boy, who is used to Call of Duty. Such is modern senescence: to age as quickly as a video game. Randy still wrestles, but the cash is petty, and he boosts his income by heaving boxes at a supermarket. He has a friend, a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), but she has no plans to be his girlfriend. Then, there is Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), his daughter, although they haven’t met in years. When they do hook up, things improve—too fast, it turns out, as if reconciliation were more of a dream than a practical goal. They book a dinner, but Randy gets drunk, misses the date, and loses her once more. “An old, broken-down piece of meat,” he calls himself. “I’m alone, and I deserve to be alone.”
“The Wrestler” is as simple as its title. The pathos of personal ruin is an established trope, and the trick, as demonstrated by John Huston in “Fat City” and by Martin Scorsese in “Raging Bull,” is to stop it from sliding into the sentimental. Aronofsky doesn’t always succeed in this, and there are lines in Robert D. Siegel’s script that wave their symbolic purpose in the audience’s face: “It’s your heart—you need to start taking better care of it.” So says a hospital medic, when Randy is admitted, and undergoes bypass surgery, after collapsing in the wake of a bout. It’s O.K., Doc, we get the point. But the movie, like its hero, manages to yank itself back into shape, and that, it strikes me, is mostly due to Rourke. When Randy goes home after the operation, and peels off his bandage, the camera zooms in to inspect the scar on his chest, whereas what really pinches our attention is his harmless habits: the mild, uncomplaining manner in which he pops in a hearing aid or adjusts his reading spectacles. He may be one of the last people in movies to use a pay phone. This fellow is mutton dressed as Ram, and he knows it, and, if he earns the caress of our pity, that is precisely because he never stoops to beg for it.
There is no denying the brutality of “The Wrestler,” and some of the scenes in the ring, especially those which provoke the cardiac arrest, are hard to watch. The movie comes off as inoffensive, however, since, unusually for these times, it trades in violence cleansed of ill will. The wrestlers are a club, greeting one another as brothers in arms, or in headlocks; one of them cheerfully sells Randy almost a thousand dollars’ worth of steroids and other drugs, and, in place of the hypocritical masking that bedevils major sports, there is a peculiar honesty, almost a decorum, running beneath the overcooked beefcake and the staged aggression of the fights. “What do you want to do tonight?” one opponent asks Randy, as if inviting him to the theatre, before proposing that he enliven that evening’s bout by puncturing his rival with a staple gun. You could call them cardboard characters, pierced and flattened for the delight of the crowd, but Aronofsky cast the minor roles with real wrestlers, and you believe in every scourging of the flesh.
For all that, the best sequence in the film, even more likely to lodge in your mind than the soaring sadness of the climax, takes place not on the wrestlers’ canvas, with its carpet of blood and broken glass, but at the deli counter of the supermarket. Here Randy, needing the money, dons a protective hairnet and doles out pasta salad. He even pins on a name tag that says “Robin,” randiness being too rich for this clientele. The dent to his pride is profound, more wounding than any professional blow to the head, and the scene closes in agony, as he takes out his frustration on a meat slicer. But here’s the thing: while the job lasts, he’s pretty good at it, bringing a brief shaft of pleasure to the customers, and suffering any taunts that come his way. What Rourke offers us, in short, is not just a comeback performance but something much rarer: a rounded, raddled portrait of a good man. Suddenly, there it is again—the charm, the anxious modesty, the never-distant hint of wrath, the teen-age smiles, and all the other virtues of a winner. No wonder people warmed to Randy Robinson twenty years ago. I felt the same about Mickey Rourke, and I still do.
Posts: 29359 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Let's hope it's not as creaky and maudlin a vehicle as The Champ (1979; directed by Franco Zeffirelli), but that style and approach seem de rigueur for the genre, n'est-ce-pas?
A Grade A review from Owen Gleiberman in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY...
Certain movies about losers have a special, desperately moving appeal. By showing us men whose lives have fallen dramatically short of their dreams, they speak to — and for — all of us. Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke as a broken-down professional wrestling star still clinging to his glory days from the 1980s, could touch a chord in audiences the way On the Waterfront and Rocky did. It has that kind of lyrical humanity. Aronofsky doesn't speak a sentimental cinematic language. Shooting in a grainy, bare-bones naturalistic style, full of jump cuts and raw light and a handheld camera whooshing about, the director of Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain now strips away all frills, tapping a classic Hollywood myth — a has-been looking for redemption — and, at the same time, transcending that myth. The Wrestler is like Rocky made by the Scorsese of Mean Streets. It's the rare movie fairy tale that's also a bravura work of art.
Back in the pumped-up, heavy metal '80s, Randy ''The Ram'' Robinson (Mickey Rourke) was a big deal, a golden-god gladiator with his own action figure and videogame. His Madison Square Garden bout with a wrestler known as the Ayatollah was seen by a million and a half people on pay per view. But that was then. Now, 20 years later, Randy is a wreck on painkillers, with pulverized bones, a hearing aid, and a face that's been mashed so many times it resembles a wad of dirty Silly Putty. But he still wrestles before small crowds in VFW halls, eating up the bluster of the adoration, which is mostly nostalgia for the bluster of two decades before.
That's something Mickey Rourke must know a lot about. As a young star, he was a bow-lipped bad boy who wooed women on screen with his soft voice and twinkly, knowing smile. Now, it's not just his look that has changed; he seems stunted — all muscle and scar tissue, a figure of damaged loss. Miraculously, though, the softness remains. In The Wrestler, Rourke is at once an authentic former wrestling superstar, a Here's How They Look Now! tabloid curiosity, and — more than ever — a great actor. With platinum hair down to his back, he's like some bloated, freakazoid Sammy Hagar, and he makes you feel every crunched bone and pained breath, the way that Randy subjects his body to punishment to remind himself he's alive. Aronofsky plays off Rourke's fallen-icon status by feasting on that spectacular, pulped wreck of a face. Yet from within that mountain of wounded flesh, Rourke gives Randy a deep, slow voice of disarming gentleness. Randy is the soul of decency encased in a monster's physique, with a buried sadness that, pushed far enough, explodes into rage.
The movie burns through the fakery of wrestling in a touching way, by letting us see how the trumped-up ''enemies'' in the ring actually love and support each other. And they're not just sham warriors. Randy slices his forehead open with a fragment of razor to make sure he's putting on a bloody good show. In one gruesome bout, he gets lacerated by barbed wire and a staple gun. Is such a scene needed? Let's just say it expresses the cutting edge of Randy's pain-freak authenticity.
When he's not in the ring, Randy is basically a polite, saddened middle-aged man who lives in a New Jersey trailer park and works part-time in a supermarket. Aronofsky, working from a script by Robert Siegel, brings us piercingly close to the life of a relic: the visits to the tanning salon, the courteous way that Randy treats even the people who make fun of him, the two-decade-old fan paraphernalia he brings to a pathetically underattended ''legend signing.'' We see how scared he is — an insecure dude who never got over his given name, Robin. He's a loner, almost completely isolated, yet he tries to reconnect to life through two women: Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), a stripper who has taken a liking to him (but still makes him pay for his lap dances), and Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), his furious estranged daughter, who now wants nothing to do with him. The movie lets us see how Randy was a bad father whose selfishness has broken his own heart. He's a man who has lost nearly everything. Yet he can still reach for grace: Standing up on the ropes, preparing to do his theatrical pounce, he looks triumphant, tearful, and ready to enter heaven. A
Posts: 29359 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Talk about comebacks. In The Wrestler, a post-Rocky look at a junked-out, has-been fighter who won’t leave the ring even though he’s long past his prime, Mickey Rourke rises from the dead to resuscitate not only his acting career but his personal self-respect as well. In interviews at film festivals in Toronto and Venice (where it won the top prize), the battered, bloated and facially disfigured former boxer who made his first impact as a method actor in 1982’s Diner and 1983’s Rumble Fish before hitting the road to ruin talked about how The Wrestler has saved him from a self-destructive Hell’s Angels lifestyle of violence, arrogance and cynicism that rendered him unemployable. Well, it’s good to see an obviously gifted man once written off as a freak punch his way through a meaty role with the hunger of a starving lumberjack tearing into raw steak. Now he attends press dinners with pet Chihuahas tucked under his arm, feeding them from his plate.
Unlike James Dean, Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando—pretty boys who declared war on their good looks with disastrous results—Mr. Rourke has lived to prove there’s dough to be earned with those dewlaps. In The Wrestler, he continues to beef up his body with steroids and suntans, making no effort to conceal the decay. With his long, dyed-blond locks and ravaged face, he looks like a creepy cross between a crazy Gorgeous George and Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Darren Aronofsky, an arty, self-conscious director I have never cared for, does his best work to date, extracting from his star the edge, pain and hetero-depravity within himself, and Mr. Rourke, realizing he’s got nothing to lose, wisely trusts the boss’ instincts. It’s like he knows this is his last chance, so he’d better show the scars and all. From start to finish, you are almost unable to believe this is acting. Like Jack Palance in Requiem for a Heavyweight, the man you’re watching not only has the role of a lifetime; he seems to be living it, too. The result is the most brutally honest performance of the year.
He plays Randy “the Ram” Robinson, a washed-up pugilist who was once a draw on the fight circuit. But that was 20 years ago. Now he’s lucky to eke out a living stacking shelves in a New Jersey supermarket warehouse, fighting anybody in local gyms who will take him on for extra money, and trying not to get killed before the bell. He’s partially deaf and cauliflower-eared, with a face like a Halloween mask and the kind of long, straw-yellow hair in a bun you see on aging waitresses and church organists; even his tattoos are faded. Living alone in a seedy trailer, piercing his skin with staple guns, smashing his head with metal garbage cans and folding chairs, he lives in a bleak world devoid of all color except for his green spangled tights, and he’s totally alone in it. His estranged lesbian daughter (the exceptional ingénue Evan Rachel Wood) makes an occasional appearance, as does a compassionate sometime girlfriend (another terrific performance by Marisa Tomei), but she’s an aging stripper with a child to raise in Trenton, N.J., and no time for romance. How sad is that? After recovering from a heart attack brought on by years of self-abuse, he makes a touching attempt to retire, but loneliness and social ineptitude force him back into the arena for the respect and applause that are missing from his empty life. Subjecting his body to epic slammings and energy-enhancing drugs, he figures whatever happens, it’s got to be better than the misery and rejection he gets in the outside world. It’s a plot so familiar it borders on cliché, and elements of everything from Champion to Million Dollar Baby are inescapable. But there’s no denying Aronofsky’s commitment (gone are all traces of arty self-indulgence that have been his trademarks in junk like The Fountain); the tough script by Robert D. Siegel, which never begs pity for its downbeat characters; and especially Mickey Rourke’s raw, naked passion, which makes his galvanizing performance a real awards contender, and provides a jump-start for a career with a dead transmission.
Posts: 29359 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Hard to find many connections between this and Aronofsky's previous work. As a big fan of The Fountain, for all its flaws, it was curious to see him fall back on such familiar material.
That despite being a pretty hoary tale it still seems fresh and involving is due to a lot of character insights and color along the way, but in particular to the three central actors - Rourke, Tomei and Wood.
I haven't seen Gran Torino yet, but otherwise Rourke's reconciliation/apology speech (about as cliched a situation as one can imagine) is about as good an acting scene that I've seen this year.
My guess is that the milieu of the film and of course all the baggage Rourke has will damage his chances, but worst is his lack of NY or LA recognition. Maybe the NSFC will rescue him, but he needs outside endorsements, and it could be too late. That said, at this point I'd prefer him to Penn and in particular Langella.
I still think the Oscar race remains Penn vs Eastwood.
Originally posted by seanflynn: Basically, see all of the above.
Hard to find many connections between this and Aronofsky's previous work. As a big fan of The Fountain, for all its flaws, it was curious to see him fall back on such familiar material.
That despite being a pretty hoary tale it still seems fresh and involving is due to a lot of character insights and color along the way, but in particular to the three central actors - Rourke, Tomei and Wood.
I haven't seen Gran Torino yet, but otherwise Rourke's reconciliation/apology speech (about as cliched a situation as one can imagine) is about as good an acting scene that I've seen this year.
My guess is that the milieu of the film and of course all the baggage Rourke has will damage his chances, but worst is his lack of NY or LA recognition. Maybe the NSFC will rescue him, but he needs outside endorsements, and it could be too late. That said, at this point I'd prefer him to Penn and in particular Langella.
I still think the Oscar race remains Penn vs Eastwood.
Since you are one of the few who has seen this movie so far I was wondering what you thought of Marisa Tomei's performance. Is she deserving of an Oscar nomination and what do you think is the likelihood of it happening?
Posts: 29359 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
