As its title indicates, The Wrestler is the story of the 1980s professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke), once the star of wrestling rings across the country, now a middle-aged man still desperately clinging to his past glory and reluctantly facing an increasingly depressing present. Although Randy is 20 years older than most of his opponents, he continues to headline small matches near his New Jersey trailer-park home every weekend. E

ven though his last installment of wrestling highlights is only available on VHS, he continues to proudly hand them out to the few devoted fans who wander by his autograph table after events. Sure, he may have to fill his body with more substances than any other wrestler to make it cooperate, he may be late on his rent every single month, but he is still Randy "The Ram," and for him, that's enough to live on.

That is until a heart attack knocks Randy to the locker-room floor, his doctor tells him that to ever wrestle again would be to invite his own death, and Randy is forced to completely reconsider who he is and the life he leads. Enter the reality that wrestling is all he has, that "The Ram" is the only Randy he knows, and that the real Robin Robinson and any other life he once had slipped away long ago. Begin a half-celebration, half-lament of the pro-wrestler, his world, and his life.

While The Wrestler draws on many themes, central to Randy's story is the contrast between false identities and realities... and actual identities and realities. As we watch Randy and his fellow wrestlers compete, what we see is a strange mix of farce and fact. Before matches, wrestlers meet with their opponents and lay out plans for their show. As tension mounts, hidden razor blades produce the self-inflicted wounds for which the crowd screams. And at just the right moment, near silent whispers turn matches from one side to the other.

Of course the fact that almost every aspect of the fight is planned doesn't change the reality that when the wrestlers come off the ring, they still have staples in their chests, barbed wire cuts across their backs, and glass embedded in their skin. And unfortunately, while every moment Randy spends in the ring may be filled with praise and cheers, the minute he steps even one foot outside his life as Randy "The Ram" and into his life as Robin Robinson, all he is left with are his scars.

Further illustrating the idea of a double life in which the real you finds almost no validation is Cassidy/Pam (Marisa Tomei), an exotic dancer at one of Randy's favorite haunts. Also working under a fake name in a performance-based vocation for which she would generally be considered too old, Cassidy/Pam's character only makes the difficult reality in which Randy is living more apparent. In the more recognizable empty adoration that Cassidy receives from customers, we are pushed to see that as loud as Randy's fans may scream, their praises also contain little value for the real Randy. As Randy and Pam first hesitate, then embrace, then struggle to connect not as a stripper and a wrestler but as a man and a woman, they reveal the difficulty of living in both worlds at the same time. And as Pam increasingly pushes to be seen as more than a stripper and actually begins to move away from that life all together, and Randy finds himself struggling to be anyone but Randy "The Ram" yet slowly falling back into the only life he has ever known, we come face-to-face with the true trial that it is to find value in a world where fights are real, injuries more serious than a quick fix, and adoration more than a matter of a good performance. For Randy, the pain of the real world is embodied in his attempts to restore a relationship with his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) to whom he hasn't spoken in years. When he first appears on her doorstep, she tells him off, reminding him how he was never there to take care of her, and she has no intention of being there to take care of him. With the help of Pam, he nudges his way in on a second visit, planting a glimmer of hope for a life where he might find a new identity as a father and a deeper value in relationships based on who he actually is as person. But when Randy "The Ram" takes over for a night and he once again lets his daughter down, Randy is once again thrust into a place of hopelessness. "There's no fixing this," Stephanie yells at Randy. "It's broken permanently."

Continue: 1 2