The Wrestler is a very good character study which has classic Aronofsky themes but is a stylistic departure. Rather than the highly stylized, in your face style of his previous three films, The Wrestler has an air of authenticity at its core. Rourke turns in an excellent performance as the lead, perfectly selling his breezy confidence in the ring and uncertainty outside it. I really loved Tomei, she frankly stole the show for me. The story is nothing too surprising, with classic biopic-style ups and downs that feel overly cliched. The performances keep it from being rote, and the ending is great. Where I'm left scratching my head is in the themes of the film. My primary takeaway from the first act of the film was how completely insane professional wrestling is. The entire entertainment element is derived purely from watching how badly people can hurt themselves, from using a staple gun on themselves to getting stuck in barbed wire to having a glass door smashed over your head. It's all staged, everyone knows it, and the crowd is just there to see this ridiculous spectacle and cheer on men allowing pain to be inflicted upon them. I was really hoping the movie would hint at the absurdity of the world and particularly have Ram grapple with the shallowness of the one thing he's devoted his life to, but we never see anything in the script approaching self-awareness on the subject. The other area I found extremely interesting but was largely left untouched was in the parallels between stripping and wrestling. Both are people effectively selling their bodies for other people's entertainment, and we see the two main characters struggle to balance and separate their lives within that shallow sphere and their everyday lives. The only line that potentially hints at irony is when Ram asks her out, is denied, and then demands a lap dance and objectifies her as merely useful for her body. Even here the irony of his disdain isn't explicit, and outside of this neither character seems to engage with this line of inquiry. One other thing that made my specific experience with this movie strange was that my library DVD had wildly incorrect information on the back of it - when I started it, I was under the impression it was a 3 hour movie so I was absolutely dumbfounded when it ended with his jump. It's a good ending to be sure, but it felt so incomplete because I had gone in expecting a sprawling, epic story and it felt so abrupt. Definitely a good movie and the general exploration of Ram's contrasting temperament inside and outside the context of wrestling was great, but a more thoughtful and subversive script could've turned this into the exceptional movie I was hoping for.
Review of The Wrestler
