Minimalist stripping of salient stage properties

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2009)

The wrestling industry can launch soaring careers and it may destroy careers in a heartbeat. As a lifelong fan of the business, I would watch taped television shows as a kid, falling in love with the various characters on the card. You would see a new personality and tell all your friends that you wanted to get their official merchandise gear as Christmas presents. A few days, weeks, months, later that wrestler had disappeared from the broadcasts, without a single mention thenceforth from the colour commentators. When you are younger the only answer is that the wrestler had time off to heal injuries. Now, with the Internet revolution that has grown and grown since the 1997 Madison Square Garden Incident, no sacking of workers happens behind closed doors. There are many websites working every day to bring fans the latest news on backstage gossip, and frequently report with the wrestler's needs at heart. Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" restrains from telling the viewer that the workers in this sports entertainment have no union. In a utopian world the draws would pick up the same wage as the other members, but this is all a preternatural proposition.
Randy 'The Ram' Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is one such casualty of the miniscule benefits available for wrestler protection. He is first seen seated in the corner of a locker room, with his back to the camera, sighing. When a bookie enters his personal space with the money for the night's work, Randy tosses it aside. It was a lesser amount than he had been expecting, but any income must seem underwhelming in comparison to his glory days, impressibly explored by Aronofsky's opening segment, in which he pans through an array of promotional material, newspaper articles, flyers, journals and gate receipts - all plugging the talent of Randy in his prime. A title card appears after this introduction, and the Randy we are meeting is now twenty years removed from his prime. We imagine, thus, how many wrestlers Randy had to trample over in order to rise to the top of the card and be the number one headliner in the game. These days he is still main event material at events, although the duel for the strap has less lustre on the independent scene.
"The Wrestler" poses a number of questions, and the most startling is the admission that Randy is no longer a good wrestler. Maybe he still is a good wrestler, actually, for that is Mickey Rourke doing all his own stunts. He is still in great shape and notice the complexity of some wrestling spots he partakes. Normally it is the more athletic and nimble opponent who takes all the bumps, but Randy dives past the ropes and onto the canvas floor, he climbs the turnbuckle and sells his version of the diving headbutt to the crowd. He can still entertain a crowd, and can garner pops within the match that are as noisy as the response his entrance music merits. In any business, a new generation comes along and Randy, even if he could keep up physically, got a little out of touch with the majority of popular culture. He tells the strip club worker whom he befriends (Marisa Tomei) the nineties sucked, singling out Nirvana as a perfect synopsis of this period's woes, and instead of playing computer games online, Randy asks one of his neighbourhood kids to play Nintendo with him. The original Nintendo console that is, with the wrestling gameplay detectable in its primitiveness.
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