The Wrestler (2008)

USA/France
directed by: Darren Aronofsky
written by: Robert D. Siegel
starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood
comment: 6th February, 2017

There must be someone who constantly wishes to kill oneself sitting inside Clint Mansell's head. I have no idea who sits inside Darren Aronofsky's head. And I think I'm partially in love with the one talking from inside the bleached head of Mickey Rourke. And I would be much happier if the whole film was only about him walking from place to place instead of this syd-fieldian story with periodical comings and goings of manufactured plot points.

The film's structure is very much affected by this (and in my eyes that means tainted (and now for brackets inside brackets: the fact that this is the screenwriter's debut explains this)) and it even leaks into the dialogue a couple of times. When he talks to the stripper for the first time and explains his plans, he says: "Who knows. I put on a good show..." And I'm already crying, because I'm so moved by the plasticity of his character and the hopefulness of his voice and her pierced nipples and everything. But then he continues by saying: "Could be the thing that gets me back on top." And I stop crying immediately and start being angry, because that's not the character talking, that's the screenwriter explaining his intentions.

And one last thing I would like to complain about is the daughter. For one thing, I don't think she's particularly well written - out of all the characters she's the one most obviously behaving the way she is because of the needs of the story arc and not because she's driven by a psychology of a well thought-out character. My second point is that Evan Rachel Wood doesn't possess the necessary talent or charisma to carry the daughter out of the obvious paper construct into the real breathing world.

All and all, I apparently like the idea, it definitely looks like Darren tried his best to suppress his ego, but personally I would hire Gus Van Sant to direct this kind of script.