My favorite scene in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler features
Mickey Rourke as washed-up wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson, complete
with hearing aid and chest pains, dancing to Ratt’s 1984 hair metal
song “Round and Round” in a dive bar. Rourke tells a stripper, Cassidy
(Marisa Tomei), how great the ’80s were, snatches a kiss, and turns
wistful. “And then that pussy Cobain came along and ruined everything,”
he says.
Rourke, who quit acting for boxing three years before Cobain shot
himself, has had a checkered career ever since. But his ability to
evoke the exuberance of the ’80s with the fragility of a man
personifying the hung-over downsides of that era undoubtedly accounts
for the widespread acclaim he’s been receiving for this role.
Robinson’s the antithesis of self-involved grunge singers, and it would
have been easy for a lesser actor to ham his way through the
part—but instead, Rourke plays him as a man too aware of the cost
of having lived to
entertain.
Thankfully, the script doesn’t take easy options, either. Where
characters could reconcile, they often don’t; Tomei’s stripper could
become a love interest for Robinson, but she makes it clear that she
doesn’t sleep with the customers; Robinson’s relationship with his
daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) is awkward rather than sentimental. Even
the scenes where Robinson’s serving meat at a deli counter are bleakly
comic.
Some have criticized the ending of The Wrestler, but one can
hardly see Robinson going out like Cobain, and why the fuck should he?
I smell a cult brewing—like Cobain’s, even, but on steroids.