This past weekend, I stumbled across a YouTube video of the magician/raconteur Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller fame) raving about the greatness of The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky's and Robert Siegel's film about an aging pro wrestler facing up to his limitations in life. Not that I'm one to look for validation in the opinion of celebrities, but the fact that Jillette and I shared many of the same reactions to the film made me feel a little less freakish.
Like Jillette, I'm of the opinion that it is one of the greatest movies I have ever seen. And the more I've thought about the film, the more I'm willing to stick my neck out and declare that The Wrestler is The Greatest American Movie of All Time. Mind you, I'm well aware of my generation's Twittery desire to label every new craze the "best.thing.ever.", but The Wrestler is not the type of film to induce such of-the-moment urges. It's timeless. It's transcends generations. And there is far too much humanity in the film for it to be processed so simply and mindlessly.
For those of you who have not seen the film, here's the plot breakdown: Mickey Rourke plays Randy "The Ram" Alexander, a middle-aged professional wrestler who was, at his career high, as famous as the WWF stars of the 1980s (Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, etc.) But, as happens so often to guys of his ilk, Randy now spends his weekends competing in low-paying weekend matches in the VFW Halls and high school gymnasiums around his home in New Jersey. He lives in a trailer court, drives an Econoline van, and pounds his fist against the steering wheel singing the lyrics to 80s metal songs like Accept's "Balls to the Wall" and Ratt's "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)". His only confidant is a stripper at a run-down club on the outskirts of town. In order to make monthly rent on his trailer, he works part-time at the local supermarket. After a particularly brutal match, Randy has a near-fatal heart attack and is warned never to wrestle again. Without wrestling and without his fans (however few there may be), Randy realizes he has nothing. He does, however, have a daughter he's been estranged from that he tries, fruitlessly, to connect with. He also tries, fruitlessly, to connect with his stripper friend. He is lonely, he is lost, and the only thing he has ever been good at is the one thing he can never do again.
Sounds a little phony and contrived, right? Exactly!
A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a Seattle filmmaker I know who said she could "go on and on" about the first 30 minutes of the film and the last 30 minutes. As a filmmaker, she couldn't get over the grittiness of the film, the documentary-like angles, the raw lighting. She also could not get over the setting. Like her, I had a visceral reaction to to the landscape, the suburban Jersey gutter of half-empty strip malls, streets and bridges that look as if they've been chewed on, skies that are colorless, trees that are leafless and bony, median strips strewn with litter, and withered grass cowering in the cracks between pavement. The entire landscape is something that gave up decades ago. This is the world Randy Alexander wakes up to each day, and it stands in bleak contrast to his life in the ring where he springs to life as "The Ram", whose mix of physicality and theatrics once earned him fame. Aronofsky gives us slight visual details to emphasize the dual-life Randy leads, which Rourke embodies fully: In the ring, he is proud, broad-shoulder, smiling, bright-eyed, and determined; in the real world, he breathes heavily, wears hearing aids, and walks with his shoulders slumped to the world, carting his wrestling outfit around in a suitcase-on-wheels that he pulls behind him. His face, as one writer put it, looks like it's been caked with plumber's caulk.
These are the things most viewers have identified with, and my filmmaker friend was no different. The story, however, was what she felt was the weakest--the fact that his only friend was a stripper, that he had an estranged daughter he wanted to connect with, that he wanted to come back from his heart attack and finish his career with one epic "comeback" bout. It all felt, as many have suggested, a bit obvious and predictable.
I agree fully. But to say the story was predictable and obvious is to deny what the film is about in the first place: A professional wrestler.
In his 1957 essay The World of Wrestling, Roland Barth observed that professional wrestling is not a sport, but rather a spectacle. Everything about a wrestling match, he wrote, is "endowed with an absolute clarity, since one must always understand everything on the spot." It is, perhaps, the most fulfilling entertainment--whether it be the hero or villain stepping into the ring, you are, as Barth wrote, "overwhelmed by the obviousness of the roles."
Obviousness, the very essence of the awesome spectacle that is pro wrestling. My mind wanders back to the many Wrestlemanias I watched growing up. How many of us can forget the amplified agony Hulk Hogan conveyed as Andre the Giant body-slammed the great, blonde Hulk to the mat with a leaded thwack! This was the main event of Wrestlemania 87 and here was big, ugly Andre the Giant, looking like 600 pounds of boiled potatoes stuffed into a black swimsuit, tossing our chiseled American hero around like a throw pillow. How could this be, we thought? Surely, Wrestlemania can't end this way? Of course, our man Hogan would eventually pull through by some miracle, pull off an awesome feat of physical strength sending The Giant toppling to the ground. Hogan would throw his body over the dead weight of The Giant like a dragonslayer, screaming to the rafters as the ref smacked the palm of his hand to the mat one, two, three! Then, the reassuring sounds of Hogan's 80s theme song "I Am A Real American" would come booming out of the coliseum's sound system as Hogan stalked the perimeter of the ring proudly, defiantly, encouraging all of his "little Hulkamaniacs" to join in the glory that was his victory!
Of course, we knew it would end this way. I was only 8 years old when this particular Wrestlemania aired on cable, but still knew that wrestling was theater and the ending was pre-determined. It was obvious and predictable.
Why, then, have American viewers and critics expected something more from The Wrestler? Well, if you look at the grandiloquence on display at the Academy Awards ceremony each year, it's obvious we are under a spell convincing us that those celebrities and filmmakers are doing something more than mere theater. The films the directors make give us "hope" and the actors are "courageous" for the characters they portray. But the joke is on us because, despite what they say, filmmakers and actors ultimately aspire to nothing more than mere entertainment. Though there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, Hollywood shrouds it in a veil of self-seriousness that makes us unashamed to shill out $10 a ticket for 2 hours of fiction (and don't be fooled by that old friendly face, "based on a true story"). But what is wrong with running a business designed to keep an audience in their seats from beginning to end? Humans need to be entertained, but we are somehow under the impression that pro wrestling is like junk food: Tastes good, but hardly nourishing, therefore not a redeemable aspect of our culture. Why? Because we know it's fake? Because we know how the match is going to end? To this, I say: Unless you have been living under a rock, you knew how Milk was going to end, as well. No surprises there, I'm afraid!
But I digress. Ultimately, The Wrestler speaks to what it means to be an American. As David Foster Wallace said, there is an unspoken loneliness and lostness in American life. You don't have to be an aging pro wrestler to identify with Randy Alexander's life of quiet desperation. The Wrestler is more shocking and eye-opening than any other film I have seen because it takes our shallow culture and slaps us hard in the face. However, it only works because Aronofsky did not set out to peel back the layers of the pro wrestling spectacle. It worked because they told a story, a story about a pro wrestler filled with all of the cliches and predictability of a WWF match. That they took such a real-life, documentary approach to the film just means that, once again, the joke is on us. (I can just hear Aronofsky snickering: "You really believed that shit we fed you?")
Years ago, my wife's friend introduced us to her new boyfriend. He was born in South Africa to French parents and we hit it off immediately as he pummeled me with questions about American music and culture. He asked: "What would you say is the most American musician?" (I think I decided on Springsteen, for obvious reasons) and "What would you say is the most American movie?" For the latter, he wanted me to name a movie that would explain everything about American culture to a foreigner like himself. I didn't have an answer for him at the time, but if he asked me today, I'd tell him to watch The Wrestler.
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