The Wrestler

John Serba, reviewer of the Grand Rapids Press, started his review with the following "What is professional wrestling, but a metaphor?" He then goes on to describe the movie which has garnered a set of awards as a "profound character study."

I am not sure if I saw the same movie as Serba, I found The Wrestler derivative and trite. It may be a problem that I thought the French and Italian directors who used this technique were as self-centered as Rourke's character. So it could be argued that I came to the movie with a prejudice against this genre.

The story is of a washed up wrestling star. It is a clip of life in the style of cinéma vérité. Rourke's character is fading fast out of the limelight and for about two hours he waltzes through relationships with a pole dancer (Melissa Tomei) and his daughter. The idea of this type of movie making was to capture the gritty reality of a situation. Indeed, in this movie there is a lot of realism - the characters bleed and sweat and vomit. But in the end none of the characters were compelling enough to me to wonder what would happen next.

My son in law, the movie exec, thought the movie would grow on me. He argues that the issue in the movie is Rourke struggling with trying to establish relationships (with the two women in his life) and ultimately deciding that in spite of risking his life (he has a by-pass about half way through the movie and is told not to wrestle again) he goes ahead with a big match harkening back to his glory days. The problem I have with that premise, is that none of the characters were compelling to me in any way.

One other criticism should be mentioned. The camera technique, to get the notion of realism, is jerky. The print we saw was grainy. I think the director was trying to capture gritty. In the end I think he was only able to capture "who cares?"