reality vs. fantasy in the wrestler

I sat cringing in my seat, recoiling in amazement at the gritty camera work highlighting the violent wrestling ring fights. While difficult to watch, the Wrestler is a beautiful, elegant, metaphor for life, with a perfect story line that is simple and touching, a nice change from the overworked affectation of present day film.

There are two types of wrestling we can think of, the 'real' variety, and the WWF genre, which is staged. The Wrestler focuses on the dramatic wrestling that we assume is akin to acting. The first scene opens with a match where the wrestlers are discussing which moves they will employ, much like an impromptu stage play.

The fight scenes are graphic, but much like a train wreck, keep you captivated and glued to the scene, unable to avert your eyes or think of anything else. Soon after, in a gritty match that tests the limits of our capacity for witnessing violence, the main character, Randy 'the Ram' Raminski, suffers a heart attack that restricts him from further wrestling, a scene that conflates reality with fantasy, where we see that staged wrestling, however fictitious, requires true sacrifice, true pain, and real physical exertion. However, unlike other sports, there is nothing glamorous about the extent of suffering here, it is gritty exertion in the name of performance, a paeon to the audience. The director moves from first to third person fluidly, highlighting a heart attack scene where we are privy to the reverb of the main character's hearing aid.

Note, I am impressed by the successful blending of the third and the first person. Initially, I was turned off by the gimmicky handheld camera action, but the technique is effective, as we are able to witness life from Randy's perspective while simultaneously reflecting as a viewer. This is probably the most successful use of this technique that I have seen in a film.

After a painful fight sequence, where Randy is injured, we learn that he is no longer healthy enough to perform. He must now take on the real world, a place where he has been unsuccessful, without love from a woman or an abandoned daughter who wants nothing to do with him, but later forgives him in a touching montage. We see Randy potentially grasping at a real life. He retires from his wrestling career.

Cinematic metaphor is employed here almost to a cliche. Randy, who's most poignant line in the film is 'I'm nothing but a broken down piece of meat,' moves from a career as a performer, to literally working at a deli counter in a grocery store. It is painful to watch Randy struggle to keep his stage name while slogging through the humdrum of working at the deli counter, often throwing in a bit of performance out of habit.

The voyeur theme is pervasive here, as we witness not only the metaphor of the wrestler, but a strip club. There is a nice juxtaposition of the viewer and performer. Randy the performer is also a customer at a local strip bar where he attempts to forge a relationship with an employee, Cassidy, who's career is also diminishing with age. The two parallel lives of Pam, stage name Cassidy, and Randy, real name Robin, is heartbreaking. Pam cannot bring herself to love Randy in real life, potentially merging two ineluctable worlds of customer and person, fantasy and reality, while Randy attempts to establish a real life for himself, making amends with his daughter, curing loneliness, finding love.

At one point we witness a fight from Randy's perspective as a viewer, when he comes to watch a match. Rather than a closeup of the ring, the director pans the audience and Randy's distance from the ring is poignant.

We see a few beautiful scenes where Pam and Randy connect, eternally similar, both aging performers with children. Pam's motherhood is an underlying theme here, as she has a chance to do right by her nine year old son, where Randy has failed with his adult daughter. There is chemistry between Pam and Randy, and a beautiful interweaving of two lives. At one point, Pam compares Randy's hair to that in the film the Passion of the Christ. Again, metaphor between reality and fantasy. She does not evoke the actual Christ figure, but the film depicting him.

Pam eventually tells Randy that she cannot be more than a performer to him, leading to a painful scene where he attempts to hold onto his old identity as a wrestler, and ultimately disappoints his daughter, always a 'fuck up' in real life. After missing a dinner with his daughter, she tells him to never speak to her again.

Randy tries to hold onto his stage name in life, while remaining embarrassed to be recognized as a washed up wrestler. His pivotal downfall occurs when a customer at the grocery store tries to place him, and recalls his career as a wrestler, calling out his name, Randy the Ram. Randy, unable to survive in the real world, returns to wrestling, despite the potential medical repercussions.

Here we witness a wrenching scene where Randy meets an old rival in a rematch follow up from twenty years ago, while Pam realizing she must save Randy, leaves her own performance to go after him and bring him back to reality. She gets to him shortly before he is about to go on stage, saying 'I'm here. I'm really here,' but it is too late for Randy. He is resigned to his world, saying that the audience is his only family.

The director leads us through a painful scene where Randy stages, what appears to the viewer, a successful fight, but in first person, we see Randy dying, again hearing the reverb of his hearing aid, the director's symbolism. We see his 'opponent' staging his own defeat while Randy suffers, barely able to stay on his feet, finally positioning himself for the Ram Jam, his signature move that will ultimately cause his death. The audience is cheering for Ram Jam. Randy obliges while we see him looking into the light, Christlike, and the camera fades to black.