Film blog: The Wrestler

The Wrestler is a well done, justly praised film. But at least for me, there is a crucial element missing. As you will see, I am going to hold the film up to a perhaps impossible standard. I think an appropriate subtitle for the film would be "An American Tragedy"- appropriate in an aspirational sense, but also I think the failure of the film.

When I saw the film shortly after Christmas, I believed the problem was that the audience could never fully come to grips with the heights from which Randy "The Ram" had fallen. Supposedly on top of the world during wrestling's 80s heyday, we only see the sad and broken man who remains, lonely and pitiful. But the trouble is not understanding the decline of the great showman, Randy the Ram. The trouble is with Randy himself.

I can remember watching the film and being unable to stop comparing Randy to King Lear. (I told you I was going to be unfair, comparing a small indie film to perhaps the greatest play ever written...) Both are stories of once great men whose relationships with family, friends and subjects (fans) are shattered by time and their own weakness. Both men do not know how to love their daughters. Both suffer ignominious deaths, although the audience is spared Randy's; we just understand it will inevitably come, sooner rather than later.

As Lear's grandeur is shattered, the audience follows him through madness and despair. He remains loved by Cordelia, Kent, and Gloucester, among others. Gloucester endures a blinding, mostly due to his enduring devotion to his King. The equivalent moment in the film is when Randy, alone and unable to deal with a "normal" job, slicing his hand in the meat slicer. Shakespeare's stage direction might have been, "exit, bereft of his dignity." Randy is just not a large enough character to inspire love or devotion from those around him- there are a few fanboys, but no friends, loves, any sustained relationship to see. Lear rages against time and fate, against torments that have seemingly been dealt to him by the fates. Randy whimpers unable to change, against a life which seems mostly of his own making, unable to connect with an ex wife, a daughter, a potential love who is as damaged as he is.

Lear dies, sadly believing he sees life in Cordelia's lips. The audience has witnessed his "blindness" and there is authentic wisdom in the play. The echoes of Ecclesiastes in an essentially pagan play create a deep and timeless resonance. The scope of Lear's universe is vast, and human. And the authentic problem for the wrestler is that Randy is too small to engender anything close to catharsis, to wisdom (for the audience, because it is so lost to himself). Perhaps The Wrestler more points toward our own culture and its 15 minutes of fame ideals. But there are smaller characters who show an audience authentic wisdom- consider the character of Andy Dufrense. And sport itself offers tragic examples, if not in the same vein as Lear than at least a more human and compelling narrative. Consider Muhammad Ali, Roberto Clemente, and Paul Gascoigne. In entertainment there is perhaps River Phoenix, Michael J. Fox... Randy the Ram makes us feel sorry for him, perhaps judge him as pathetic and unable to change. And it is this inability to change, a static character rather than a dynamic one, that ultimately causes The Wrestler to remain a piece of popular entertainment, simply a well done film rather than an iconic, monumental one.