The Last Ram Jam

Rating: 9/10 (5 April 2009)

After watching 'The Wrestler' I can safely assume that Darren Aronofsky is capable of making an Oscar-winning movie about daily tasks of an office clerk. The screenplay of the latest film of the director of "Requiem for a Dream" is simple and unsurprising. But it's not the screenplay that matters in Aronofsky's movies. It's only a minor part of the art of cinema for him. What matter is getting into human beings, feeling their emotion. And this, again, worked amazingly well.
Randy 'The Ram' (Rourke) is an aging wrestler, a former star of the great American invention mistakenly called there "wrestling", which actually has more to do with acting than wrestling and can be summed up as "trying to imitate a cruel fight using hands, legs and different sharp artifacts". Despite his age and significant health problems, he's determined to have his "last fight" that -- as he hopes -- will get him back to the top.
This is however only a dream. In reality his days of fame have passed long time ago and Randy makes a living trying random physical job, and spending his weekends fighting in a local wrestling club, usually with wrestlers that could be his sons or grandsons. And the nights... He spends them mainly in a local night club where he gets involved in a sort-of-relationship with an aging stripper (Tomei). And this relationship together with desperate attempts to get back daughter's trust (the daughter for whom he didn't care for over 15 years) make the movie.
But as I wrote before, the plot is not crucial in Wrestler. somewhere I read that this film was supposed to be "an attempt to draw attention to the how America treats its former stars". Frankly, I would not find that interesting and I do not think anyone really cares. Fortunately, Aronofsky is distant from those kinds of deep topics, and chooses to rather focus on the main character, the wrestler, on his awkwardness, helplessness and his fight, his constant fight to get out of his magnificent past and start a new life. And this focus is the strength of the movie.
It's very naturalistic in showing the preparation for fights, cleaning the body, removing strange artifacts and blood afterwards. It's touching in the way it shows his every-day life: a scene when playing an old Nintento game with neighbor's kid (wrestling of course), casual sex with a narcotized girl remembering his previous fame. All those activities do not allow him to forget who he is... or who he was.
A separate paragraph should be devoted to Rourke alone. His role was simply so natural, so realistic that it just felt that 'The Ram' is himself, that he's not acting. Because... how on Earth could we justify the fact that simple and pretty conventional scene of saying "I'm sorry" to his daughter is one of the most powerful and touching ones in the whole movie? How on Earth other that -- it just feels real.
Thanks to the great Rourke and fantastic climax building using music, sound, cinematography and "this something" added by Aronofsky, "The Wrestler" is a powerful and engaging movie that I watched with my jaws dropped up until the final "Ram Jam".
// This review has been originally published at http://filmaster.com -- film buffs community //