The Raging Bull of the decade

Rating: 10/10 (25 January 2009)

The Raging Bull of the decade? Absolutely. Darron Aronofsky successfully channels Scorsese by treating this tale with a visceral edge and a tragic sadness about it, and Mickey Rourke's firecracker performance may very well be every bit as classic as Robert DeNiro's (appropriate since his real life personality and past is eerily similar to his character here). Many might feel strange about the creator of the Requiem For A Dream and the equally ambitious Fountain handling material that appears this pedestrian on the surface. But despite the fact that his signature melodrama and high production is toned down for a raw documentary-style of film making, the intentions and themes are every bit as transcendent as his old works. The tale of Randy "The Ram" is not a run-of-the-mill story of a wrestler, but of a man who does what he does in order to feel love. He pursues his painful career not because he enjoys the action of it, but because he wants the love that his audience gives him. He becomes a slave to that desire for human contact, putting his body through hell because of his clear lack of appreciation in his every day life. Paralleled with the tale of a stripper whose affections he pines for and whose own life contains an emptiness equal to his, this becomes much more than the story of a wrestler. It becomes an allegory for the things that drive us into destruction. Aronofsky has always been brilliant at creating this near perfect thematic structures, but it's always been undermined by ridiculously overdone productions. With The Wrestler's more understated style, he finally fulfills his potential.