.............................................................TRAPPED INSIDE A WORLD UNDER LEAGUES OF OCEAN........................................................

Monday, October 10, 2011

movies: the wrestler (2008)

Dir: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Marissa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

Much ballyhoo'd return to grace for Mickey Rourke, it is everything the hype machine claims it to be, and more, for cheap quotable praise is too easily given away these days.

The wrestler and the stripper are symbols, as obvious as it may seem, for those who rely solely on their bodies for their living and as their bodies begin to fail them, so goes their worth in the world. As each grows older, and the form is stripped away, all that is very apparently left is the soul and the innate need to be loved, wanted, needed, simply not to be alone. Aronofsky eschews all sentimentality, though, in favour of raw emotion, of small lives laid bare and lived large, of characters who are legends in their own mind, but who ultimately come to the terrifying, soul-crushing, and ultimately redemptive - and profoundly human - realization that this...is...it. Facing the void, but too stubborn or too dumb to turn away. This small spark is often all we have and we must clutch the spark, protect it, never let it go out. As long as we have that tiny spark inside of us then the soul of man can never die.

Instead of throwing in the towel, the characters soldier on, absurdly and beautifully. The final scene alone is worth the price of a million bleeding hearts, and the rest of the film is just as good.

The Wrestler breathes, it bleeds, it weeps; it is broken, it sins, and it forgives. It simultaneously revels in the absurdity of human life and shows why that life is worth living.

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