The Wrestler

After the awesome delight that was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button just a couple of days ago I was unprepared to see something equally as good so soon, but I have. Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler is staggeringly good. I have no reservation whatsoever in saying this movie will be nestling at the top of my list of favourite's of 2009. I also have to say that if Mickey Rourke doesn't walk away with a Best Actor Oscar come award season, it'll be a crime.

Rourke plays Randy "The Ram" Robinson, in the 80's (as a credits montage reveals) a superstar wrestler. The top of his game. There were video games and action figures and adulation aplenty. But by the time the opening credits are over, we follow (literally) a broken man, both physically and mentally. He continues to trawl the low rent wrestling circuit, lives in a trailer park and has a fractured relationship with a stripper and his daughter.

Unlike the sparkling beauty of Aronofsky's previous (and wonderful) movie, The Fountain, the Wrestler is shot cinéma vérité style. Often the camera simply follows Rourke as his life is incrementally revealed. When we finally see the actor himself, his face is no longer the handsome 80's heart throb of Angel Heart, but a victim of the ravages of boxing and botched plastic surgery. Within a few minutes, the genius of the film is that Rourke is Randy and vice versa, so much so that much of the film feels like you're privy to the raw pain of Rourke and the life he's lived, the mistakes he's made.

And raw is the best word to describe the film. The second of two sequences of wrestling in the movie is utterly painful to watch and leads to a turning point that I won't reveal here. But it's clear that Rourke isn't acting or appearing to act at any point.

One scene that bears a mention too is when Randy visits an American Legion Hall for a meet and greet event that amounts to a handful of has been sportsmen behind tables of videos and t-shirts of them in their hey-day, while tiny amount of fans come in for autographs and polaroids. At one point, Rourke glances around at one of his fellow wrestlers asleep at his table, and at others in wheelchairs or staring into space. It's one of the most profoundly sad and moving scenes of any movie I've ever seen.

If this all seems a little heavy, far from it. The movie never loses sight of being an audience pleaser. There's plenty of humour spinkled amongst the dark stuff, and in the end you'll walk away from it feeling utterly satisfied by its emotional heft. Everything is perfectly judged. Best film of 2009? It's going to take some beating.