TIFF Reaction: THE WRESTLER

I approached my screening of THE WRESTLER with a lot of hope and expectations. It seems as though with every week that goes by, another glowing bit of info about this movie hit the fan. expectations climbed a few rungs over the weekend when the movie won The Golden Lion which is the top prize at The Venice International Film Festival.

The movie features an amazing performance by Mickey Rourke, as Randy “The Ram” Robinson. The Ram was an iconic wrestling hero in the 80’s (Think vintage Hulk Hogan). Nowadays, he still wrestles, but now they’re staged in community centres rather than hockey arenas. The take may be smaller, and the fame may be rusted, but The Ram still does it – primarily because he doesn’t seem to be able to do anything else. He walks through his lower class life as a broken hero, a man worn and weary and ripe to have a reality film crew turn his life into the next voyeuristic hit.

It’s my hope that people don’t see the title of this movie and shrug thinking that because they don’t care about wrestling, that the film isn’t for them. The movie is about people who don’t notice the world passing them by until it’s already gone. It’s about titans who believe so deeply in their own legend because it’s all that they have. It’s unfolded beautifully by Darren Aronofsky at arm’s length, and Rourke’s performance did indeed make me think back to the monsters of men I used to cheer for as a kid. The sadness he brings to the part actually left me worried about how many of them are doing now.

The big industry news to come from TIFF is the fact that Fox Searchlight bought this film this week. This means that the coming weeks and months will likely be like the past weeks and months, where every day you’ll read more and more praise for this film.

THE WRESTLER plays once more at TIFF 08, and will be released by Fox in the next six months. It’s beautiful – go see it.