The Wrestler

It was the surprise film of the London Film Festival, leading up to the screening I had a number of suspicions, I noticed that a large welcome package that is given to A-list visiting filmmakers was being sent to Darren Aronofsky, sure his wife Rachel Weisz was attending her film, another member of the festival staff saw the festival directors doing a print test of the film a few days before the start of the festival, and then, to seal my suspicions, staff from the distribution studio arrived with a guest list for ‘The Wrestler’, I was excited to see it, it had won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, critics had been praising it as one of the best films of the year, and they were right, Mickey Rourke gives a fantastic performance as a man who has made many choices through his career and his life that he now considers a mistake, performances are often the best when actors can bring their own experiences to a role and this film suggests that Rourke could be ready for a Downey Jr style comeback, or maybe Aronofsky is the only working director that knows how to use him, it is perhaps Aronofsky’s best film for a maturity that was painfully absent from ‘Requiem for a Dream’ and ‘The Fountain’ despite their stylistic strengths, still at times I felt like he was leaning on the genre conventions of the sports film that have been done to death, it is certainly his most optimistic film, even if it doesn’t allow its characters happiness, it does provide suggest the possibility of some sort of happiness, something again that I don’t think was present in his earlier films, and he makes the subject of wrestling interesting, no doubts about it, the sport is very American and this film is very American, I was tempted to ask Aronofsky during the following Q & A what he thinks it is about the United States that has generated such popularity for the theatrics of wrestling, but I held back, enjoying Aronofsky and Rourke bickering, Rourke swearing like I would expect from him, I look forward to the next projects from either of these two, just as long as it is not Sin City 2.