The Wrestler

OK I admit it...like a moth to the flame, I've always been attracted to the bad boys of film… the edgy, twitchy guys...Clive Owen, John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, Jude Law in The Road to Perdition to name a few. For me it's not about looks, it's about that edginess. There is no bad boy more loved by me than Mickey Rourke. I fell in love with him in the film The Pope of Greenwich Village.

Sometimes life imitates art. In The Wrestler, art is imitating life. Mickey Rourke's real life is every bit as sadness evoking as that of the character he plays in The Wrestler, Randy Robinson. Rourke had very unsuccessful plastic surgery in the late 1990s and has had difficulty keeping his life from careening wildly about, making directors and producers leery of offering him roles. It’s sad. He’s talented. But, I think talent is like pretty…pretty is as pretty does…out of control talent is useless.

 

This movie is raw and brutal and gritty. I’m not just talking about the wrestling scenes which in and of themselves are difficult to watch. We meet one time wrestling circuit star Randy Robinson as he is not at all gracefully embracing his golden years. His glory days are gone, his body is giving out as much from lifestyle as from being slammed on the canvas and bounced off the ropes and he’s alone living in a rundown trailer park. He earns his living performing in B matches on the has-beens circuit, selling his autograph to old timers who might remember him from twenty years ago. Underneath all of this we see a core of kindness and gentleness still surviving in Randy. Rourke plays this role with such genuine insight and depth of feeling that I choose to believe that he and Randy are true alter-egos in every sense of the word.

Marisa Tomei is fabulous as Cassidy, an aging stripper with a nine year old son. Randy tries hard to get her to date him, a thing against the rules; lap dancers don’t date paying customers. Eventually she is drawn to his kindness and I think his true gentleness in the face of a brutal life. Tomei also turns in a really believable performance making the audience respect her wisdom and strength as we are mesmerized by a gritty life struggle that we can’t even begin to imagine.

In the end, this isn’t a movie one “loves” in the way one can love Gone With the Wind or The Sound of Music.  It’s too raw for loving. It’s a movie whose truth one can embrace, a movie whose humanity is the fundamental theme. All I’ve thought since I saw the movie is “there goes each of us if choices and circumstances in our lives had been different". I mean really, what’s the difference between a forty year old giving lap dances for her dollars to support her son and a forty year old face-lifted emotionally or physically abused golf widow staying in a rotten marriage to support her children? There is a scene in which Randy had re-established a relationship with the daughter he abandoned many years before. The daughter warily agrees to go out to dinner with him on Saturday. Randy starts his Saturday early by meeting a girl in a bar where they engage in bathroom stall sex, lots more drinking at her place and an evening of sex, indulging the girl’s fireman sex fetish. Needless to say, he misses the dinner date with his daughter who is devastated and once again severs her relationship with her Dad.

I know people like Randy, people who just can’t seem to learn from their past mistakes. They aren’t evil. They’re just incapable of “getting it.” It’s so easy to see strippers and dopers and homeless people as less human somehow, a sub-strata of society different from the rest of us. What happens to a forty year old stripper? Where does she go from there? Does she have a pension plan? There is a wonderful scene: The wrestler, at his supermarket day job, spends one afternoon working behind the deli counter. He's embarrassed at first, with his hair hidden behind a shower cap, but his gentle nature and good humor surface, and soon he's flirting, playing with customers and trying to do a good job. The scene shifts from a semi-comical odd juxtaposition to a vision of unsung grace, and one comes away thinking, "What a great soul" - and thinking also about other great souls, finding glory in hard or ridiculous places.

I guess the thing that stays with me after the movie is the very human fragility of the characters. They aren’t all that different than the rest of us. They want to love and be loved just like we do. They want to have regular lives just like ours, but somehow seem incapable of walking the path leading there. It is somehow beyond them, just beyond their understanding of how to get there. They aren’t bad people and in fact can often be quite likeable. They just seem perpetually lost.

If you like a happy ending, this isn’t the movie for you. If you can deal with life’s sometimes unpleasant underbelly and come away a more compassionate person for the experience, then this is the movie for you. It is superbly acted. I’ve seen Milk and leaned towards Sean Penn (another favorite Bad Boy of mine) to get the Best Actor Oscar. Now after seeing Mickey Rourke’s performance in The Wrestler, Rourke gets my vote. This isn’t a movie about wrestlers and strippers. It’s a movie about humanity.

An Almost Perfect Day

"Our pupils had not much exposure to wine, and kept making uniformed statements like 'Oh wine, I don't like it." When Mary Ward said, 'I never drink red wine; I like only dry white wine,' Paul took that as a personal insult. "That's like saying, 'I never talk to French people. I only talk to Italians.' " Julia Child, My Life in France

Yesterday was just about as perfect a Sunday as I could have imagined. The day was warm. The sky bright blue as only a south Florida sky can manage. It was easy weather. The kind of day that wraps around one like an old, soft cotton sweater.

We had coffee. Well, I had coffee. The Brit has yet to acquire a taste for it. He had a cup of beautiful deep amber hued Yorkshire tea. Husband volunteered to nip up to the local market for The New York Times. We luxuriated, reading the paper leisurely, passing sections back and forth, sharing snippets and insights as we were struck by one thing or another. I found two articles I thought might be of interest to daughter-in-law in the Business sections and emailed them to her.

As it was Sunday, I planned a lunch for two o'clock. Husband lent his hands and nimble fingers to mix and then jellyroll a cheese stuffed meatloaf. I stand over him and give instructions, watching as he pours salt into his palm and saying, "OK, that's enough, dump it in." I supervise everything. The recipe is in my head, the ingredients measurements indelibly etched in my mind's eye. I carefully guide him as he shapes the meat mixture into a rectangle, telling him how much shredded cheese to scatter before rolling the rectange into the jellyroll. It would be really difficult for me to make the meatloaf with out husband's hands. I'd probably cry in sheer frustration and give up.Husband diced up bacon and onion for me to sautee’ to pour over cooked fresh green beans.He peeled potatoes for garlic mashed potatoes.Our meal was wonderful.

At four o’clock we left for the movies.Husband was going to see “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” which I had seen with a friend the day before.I would see Frost /Nixon.His movie started forty-five minutes before mine and ran fifteen minutes later.We often see separate movies together.I really like doing this.Quite often husband and I do not like the same type of movie.He wants to be entertained.I want to be intellectually stimulated, my thoughts provoked, my emotions stimulated.Husband likes happy endings.I also like sitting where I want to sit, staying all the way through the ending credits and not talking too much about a movie until I’ve had a chance to think about it for a few minutes.I am also as much into the cinematography as anything else (actually, that’s really what I liked best about Benjamin Button…the filming was wonderful!).The story was OK, but really in my opinion, another Forest Gump, but with a quirky twist. It was also a bit saccharin and preachy.Cate Blanchett was, as always, magnificent.Brad Pitt was Brad Pitt, pretty and charming.The only movie I ever thought he did a great acting job in was Legends of the Fall, which also interestingly enough, also had Julia Ormond who was in Benjamin.To me, she is a beauty in some not in your face beautiful way.I can’t really explain it. Husband really liked the movie.It was a sort of fairy tale and while not a happy ending movie, it was entertaining.Enough said. As for Frost /Nixon…I really liked it.The acting was first rate.Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost were fantastic.Kevin Bacon as Jack Brennan was OK, although I always find him a bit too white bread for my tastes. Below are two movie quotes I liked.

David Frost: Are you really saying the President can do something illegal?
Richard Nixon: I'm saying that when the President does it, that means it's *not* illegal!
David Frost: ...I'm sorry?

Even though Nixon was a real bastard and an affront to the Presidency, the quote from the movie cited below made me feel almost sad for him.We tend to forget how human our presidents are.

Richard Nixon: That's our tragedy, you and I Mr. Frost. No matter how high we get, they still look down at us. David Frost: I really don't know what you're talking about.

Richard Nixon:
Yes you do. Now come on. No matter how many awards or column inches are written about you, or how high the elected office is, it's still not enough. We still feel like the little man. The loser. They told us we were a hundred times, the smart asses in college, the high ups. The well-born. The people who's respect we really wanted. Really craved. And isn't that why we work so hard now, why we fight for every inch? Scrambling our way up in undignified fashion. If we're honest for a minute, if we reflect privately, just for a moment, if we allow ourselves a glimpse into that shadowy place we call our soul, isn't that why we're here? Now? The two of us. Looking for a way back into the sun. Into the limelight. Back onto the winner's podium. Because we can feel it slipping away. We were headed, both of us, for the dirt. The place the snobs always told us that we'd end up. Face in the dust, humiliated all the more for having tried. So pitifully hard. Well, to *hell with that*! We're not going to let that happen, either of us. We're going to show those bums, we're going to make 'em choke on our continued success. Our continued headlines! Our continued awards! And power! And glory! We are gonna make those mother fuckers *choke*!

When we reconnected after our respective movies, Husband wanted me to tell him all about Frost/Nixon.This request really aggravated me.I know, I am a selfish witch.But jeeze, he wanted lightness and then he wanted to soak up my report and analysis as well as retelling of American history.I got a bit snippy and regretted it later.Oh well…I am human and chock full of faults just like Richard Nixon.This is why his quote evoked my sympathy.We all have feet of clay, wives and presidents alike…