The Wrestler (2008) review
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Ragged glory - words that best describe The Wrestler. Its magnificent showcase by Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) makes this film special, within the realm of all things so ugly they turn into beautiful.
From the sub-hollywoodian America, the real America, the one that stirs mixed feelings of nausea and fascination in those strangers who saw it, magisterially exposed, to the actual projection of what is, for this America, nothing less than sport: wrestling, grotesque monkey-like behaviour on which the filmmaker demands attention: even such activity requires effort and sacrifice, so to speak. The genius of the film resides exactly in the subliminal, continuous suggestion of this "so to speak".
This is the story of a perfectly ordinary loser, of many losers lacking all things special, on which the clothes of glory had no way of fitting to start with, therefore the irony resonating in the background when words like "warrior" or "hero" are spoken throughout the movie. Sign of his greatness, Aronofsky manages to narrate a disgustingly prosaic story (in all aspects, especially that of depth) in a way that universalizes it up to the forging of an idea, emerging from the furnace of artistry: illusion itself is what hides behind and beyond illusions, the wrestler is just that. Ragged glory, of the most trivial and repulsive kind, fulfilling its paradox within the careless universality of "being" in such a painful and generic fashion, it becomes a template for any possible existence.
Memorable scene: last ring entrance, on the Guns n' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine" poem.
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