Sorrow revealed frame-by-frame

Rating: 10/10 (12 January 2009)

Most reviews discuss this movie as a plot and performances. But I experienced it as a metaphor, almost as though someone said, "Let's make a movie based on Thoreau's 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,' but make it contemporary and gutty-engrossing.
There's no real back story, beyond "20 years ago this guy was a famous wrestler," and "this guy is estranged from his daughter because basically he was an absent jerk-of-a-father," and "this pitiful guy lives in a ghastly trailer and is even locked out of that because he can't pay the rent." Just those bare bones allow the viewer to create a huge past, knowing The Ram lives his life focused on former glory while unconscious to, but skirting with, the reality that it was built on mountains of detritus from his sacrificed life. He is a Gladiator in a very Roman sense. He is a prisoner and both a real and symbolic sacrificial figure, mired in an arena where pain has wedded fame. And though he is still stuck, he's over the hill in absolutely every way.
When he suffers a heart attack and has a by-pass, which creates a permanent side-line of "you may no longer be The Wrestler," the viewer already knows he will enter the ring again. This is a man who has lived a life filled with choices, as every man has, and you realize that he has made the wrong choice at every turn. Now his life has narrowed to a desperate parody of former fame. He's a has-been who barely ever was, he knows it, he lives it, it oozes out of every pore, his emotional agony resonates in his every pain-wracked breath. He's an excruciating example of "you reap what you sow" and that is what makes this film universal, not unlike "A Christmas Carol." Roarke's extraordinary performance captures you from the beginning, drawing you into his world, which is haunted by lost dreams from which he can't escape, humiliations which have piled so high he can no longer be anything but humble and wry, yet he bulls on, shooting up steroids, washing down pain-killers, both of which are again metaphors for his loss of power and his tortured soul.
He's a gentle, narcissistic man who has focused his entire will on being The Ram, a huge physical presence of strength and power. But his real name is Robin and the sweet, vulnerable bird inside him has few feathers left. He's human, aging, desperately alone, wants love, to be connected, to on some level be a part of the regular world. In this way, he is no different from any addict or alcoholic or workaholic or actor/fame-seeker wanna-be, anybody who has wandered down a path of Self that is destructive and filled with denial. He is Every Failed Man times twelve.
The sorrow of the film is palpable. It is sublime in its realization. Mickey Rourke is genius.