The Wrestler (2008)

Much ballyhoo'd return to grace for Mickey Rourke, it is everything the hype machine claims it to be, and more, for cheap quotable praises are all too easily given away these days. With that out of the way, I will go on record as saying that the last film I saw in 2008 was also the year's best for me. Granted, there was MUCH I didn't see this year, and this assessment is based on a very small sample size of current film. However, Darren Aronofsky's film did for me what so few modern films achieve: it made me feel, it reminded me that I, too, am a human being. Whether or not that is the ultimate goal of all film, or whether that should be a yardstick by which to measure a film's success, is another post altogether.

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 being too stubborn or dumb to turn away. This small spark is 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. Just go see it (at the cinema, yes). 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. A more powerful and affecting film I have not seen in a long, long time.