This was AMAZING..

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2009)

"The Wrestler" centers on Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke), a wildly popular professional wrestler from 2 decades ago who now barely makes ends meet as an aging wrestler in the independent circuit. With his health beginning to fail from his physically demanding job, he tries to amend his life by quitting wrestling, reconciling with his daughter he abandoned long ago and pursuing Cassidy, a prostitute he's been infatuated with for quite sometime. But his efforts failed him, and then he receives an offer to do a high-profile rematch with his nemesis "The Ayatollah", the match could be his ticket to fame once again. Failing health and all, he must decide whether life is better lived inside the ring, or outside of it.
Love. Pain. Glory.
Darren Aronofsky's movie is a deeply affecting meditation of the three, and bears many parallels to life as we AIM to live it. Wrestling serves as a metaphor for Randy's stage, a place that is not offered him by the real world. In many ways, the wrestling ring is the only place for randy that he can be himself, stripped of his humanly imperfections and adulated by his fans. In life, he's never had the appreciation of the important people in his life.
When Cassidy and Randy started to develop a friendship, randy thought they were headed for the start of a beautiful relationship, but Cassidy, though full of warmth and honest in friendship, turns down Randy and explains that she, like randy the wrestler, puts on a show, as far as she's concerned, he's only a customer who pays just like everyone else. Randy is so torn he goes on to binge on sex, drugs and alcohol that same night, TOTALLY forgetting he's supposed to meet his daughter, (whom he has had small progress with) for a pre-planned dinner...
In one night, he lost permanently (in a manner of speaking) the two important people in his life.
In some ways, Cassidy and Randy are both similar and different. Similar because both Randy and Cassidy are in a "world" where the corruption of the body is the trade. Different because Randy does his job out of satisfaction from the glory, while Cassidy treats prostitution as a means to an end, to raise her son. Perhaps Randy saw in Cassidy something that is more important than Glory---- Love.. Randy, at this stage in his life recognizes his need for emotional connection, something real, something that no "perfect stage" can ever supply. But when the world deprives him of this need, it becomes his realization that the pain from inside the ring is no match against the pain present outside of it..
The pain of LOSS and ALIENATION.
***
Less than 24 hours before the unveiling of the Oscar nominees, I'm surprised there's not much kudos going around for Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler"... but what is even more surprising is the seemingly unanimous opinion that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a "LOCK" at the Oscar best picture nominations while "The Wrestler" isn't even mentioned in many "top 10s" from film sites and film forums. How can a film THIS GOOD be overlooked by the cinephiliacs...
The mad love i have for Slumdog Millionaire stays after my 3rd viewing, the movie's technical virtuoso and the directing are all topnotch and it may very well get the Oscar for best picture... but if THE WRESTLER gets nominated alongside slumdog for BEST PICTURE, i won't be surprised if this dark horse edges slumdog for the statuette.