“Ignoring [the fact] that death is part of life cheats only one person: yourself.” – Director Darren Aronofsky, during a masterclass at SXSW Festival, 2018.
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While I was watching The Wrestler, a masterful film by Darren Aronofsky with a miraculous turn from Mickey Rourke as the eponymous wrestler, I observed not only that this film was affecting me emotionally, but also physiologically. At times during the film my fists were clenched so hard that I became aware of my own body, and it was the film that was having this effect on me. At a certain point, the film got so physically hard to watch that I had to take a break. Afterwards, it occurred to me how few films, or indeed artworks in general, make us think about ourselves as embodied beings.
Maybe it’s down to some lofty conception of the human person that has descended to us in the Occidental world from the Ancient Greeks through Christianity through Descartes to the present day; but there is certainly an unwritten idea in our culture, our language, and our art, that the human body and mind are fundamentally different. The mind inhabits the body and drives it like a conductor, but the mind is beyond the body in some way. In fact, since the mind is able to contemplate the beauty of nature etc. while the body has needs and gets sick, the mind is somehow superior to the body. That’s why our great masterpieces of art so often perceive the body merely as a receptacle and vehicle for the mind (if it is acknowledged at all) or the body is used as a spectacle; the subject is devoid of mind, soul, anima, etc. so that the spectator can marvel at the beauty of this particular human body, or at the artist’s taste in presenting this body as part of a frame (be it narrative, thematic or compositional).
However, when was the last time a verbose melodrama or an Impressionist nude made you reflect on your own body? On how you yourself are positioned in space and time? On how that feels? On what it is like to feel or be at all?
Even though we as a society have almost uniformly thrown out Descartes’ mind/body distinction (at least in the literal sense), we still have as yet to come around to the idea that, even though we are conscious beings, we are embodied conscious beings. Our mind, soul, anima, is located within and through our body. But where is it? Is it in our head? In our heart? Philosophers of the Mind and phenomenologists are still trying to work this out. However, one of the best descriptions I heard of the phenomenon of the mind-body (that is, the mind-body as one) came from a talk by Alan Watts, a former English cleric turned Eastern philosopher, who was critical in popularising Eastern philosophy in the United States during the 1950s and 60s.
It was while listening to one of his talks that Watts asked the question, “Where are you?” as in, “Where is that thing that you call you, your character, your person, your mind, soul, where is that located?” After concluding that it could not be outside the body, Watts asked if it is in our head, or in our heart. We can’t be sure. But we do feel ourselves, because what we are (that is to say our mind, soul etc.) is “a chronic muscular tension”. Watts of course said this with levity and humour, but his point rang true for me. Think of yourself now. Where are you? You are located wherever your body is experiencing the most trouble (for myself it is and always has been a peculiar clenching sensation in the lower throat). One could consider this a reminder from your body that it is there, and it affects you as much as you affect it, and that it is, in fact, what you are.
We are our bodies, and Aronofsky makes this idea central to the aesthetics, drama, themes and effect of The Wrestler.
The story of The Wrestler is a decidedly simple one; Randy the Ram (Mickey Rourke) is a professional wrestler who was massively successful during the late 80s, but since then has been forced to work part-time time at a supermarket while playing small shows on the weekends. However, after a particularly brutal match Randy suffers a heart attack, just weeks before he is due for a rematch with his most renowned adversary, leaving him unable to continue fighting without jeopardising his health, or even his life. In order to cope with his new situation, he tries to form a relationship with Pam (Marisa Tomei), an aging stripper and single mother who isn’t far from retiring herself, and reaching out to his estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) who he had abandoned several years before, while he contemplates a life without wrestling.
While Aronofsky is known for making ephemeral, mentally taxing films, here he takes a completely different approach; rather than try to elevate his subject matter to the cosmic or spiritual, he dives into the physicality and material reality of his characters.
For the two main characters, Randy and Pam, they are both dependent on their bodies and their mastery of their bodies for their happiness and livelihoods, respectively. Randy has been a wrestler all his life and considers it to be his vocation, while Pam depends on her dancing ability and physicality to make a living for herself and her young son. Even Stephanie, who is presented as being more intellectually developed and emotionally distant than her father or Pam, has a relationship to her own physicality; as the long-suffering daughter of a man who wasn’t there for her during her childhood, she has developed abandonment issues and with it a reluctance to touch or be touched by other people.
Aronofsky develops this story of human-as-body in tandem with the conceptual story of the events of the plot and the characters’ dialogue. Aronofsky, together with his cinematographer Maryse Alberti, spend extended sequences exploring how the characters relate to their bodies with a cinema language composed of intimate closeups, observational long shots and intuitive editing. As Randy is the main character, we spend most of our time with him. We are there with him before and after each fight as he bandages himself, warms up, cools down and recovers from the pain inflicted on him. We are also there with him in the ring, where the choreography and cinematography unite to at once show the speed, intensity and power of the fights, as well as how Randy works with his body to perform amazing feats of strength and movement, and how each hit affects him.
Similarly, we spend a lot of time with Pam as she performs her routine in the strip club. We are never put in the perspective of the customers who objectify her; rather, we are usually on the table with Pam as she dances. Her performance is measured, flowing and acrobatic, and as the camera moves around her and with her, we see the intense concentration on her face, as each move must be executed with precision and control. The customers are incidental to her act; her job is to dance, and she does it with dedication, skill, and purpose.
As both characters are so fundamentally physical, it makes sense that we would see them together for the first time when Pam gives Randy a lap dance. Their dialogue during this first scene revolves around Randy’s upcoming rematch and the physical toll of wrestling, which Pam relates to the biblical Passion, how Christ bore the punishment of the Romans for the sins of mankind. However, as both characters are fundamentally expressive through their bodies, they communicate primarily as such. Pam dances for and caresses Randy while he shows her the wounds and scars he has accumulated over the years. Their bond is established through their physicality, and their exchange concludes when Pam’s time runs out. For her, the dance is a job. This will be an important factor in their relationship.
As Randy develops feelings for Pam he tries to get her to meet him outside of the club, which is both prohibited by the management and by Pam herself. Eventually she offers to help him find a present for his daughter, and when they meet, she initially keeps her physical distance from him. As the day goes on, the physical distance between them closes and they go to get a drink together. In the bar, Randy playfully dances for Pam and in the heat of the moment, they kiss. Although the feeling is mutual at the moment, Pam immediately regrets it, as for her, there is a distinction between the physicality she performs and genuine intimacy. Her mind-body relationship has been disturbed.
At this point, while Randy and Pam grow farther apart, he and his daughter grow closer together. After several attempts at contact with her, Randy convinces her to go on a walk with him, where he tearfully apologises for abandoning her as a child and resolves to do better. In any other film, the emotional work would be completed when the dialogue is completed. However, Aronofsky allows the scene to continue after Randy’s clumsy but sincere apology. As father and daughter walk through an abandoned ballroom, Stephanie takes Randy’s arm and leans on his shoulder. Randy smiles, and leads his daughter in a waltz. As Stephanie recognises that her father put himself on the line by trying to reach her through language, his weakest form of communication, and begins to trust him again, she recognises his need for physical affirmation and, in dancing with him, meets him halfway.
All of the above instances show how the characters’ bodies support them and enable them to communicate. But the drama of the film comes from how the characters’ bodies fail or when they misuse their own bodies.
Randy’s struggle comes from a lifetime of abusing his own body, through a mixture of chemicals and over-exertion, which is exacerbated by age. We are there in the dressing room when we see (and feel) Randy exhibiting the symptoms of a heart attack for a painstaking sixty seconds before collapsing. Following his rejection by Pam and facing the embarrassment of working in a supermarket to sustain himself, Randy willingly inflicts punishment on his own body. He wounds his hand in order to quit his job and indulges in hard drugs and a one-night stand to try and find the rush he naturally got from his heyday as a wrestler. This sensual indulgence prevents him from keeping an appointment with his daughter, who, her trust broken, becomes numb to his physical affection. Meanwhile, Pam herself is facing the reality of aging, as she realises that no amount of skill, self-control or sensuality can make her appealing to a clientele that is attracted to younger women. Her body is no longer suited to her own work anymore than Randy’s is.
The tragedy of Randy is that he refuses to accept the value of his own body beyond its capacity to bring him accomplishment, exhilaration and, to a certain extent, love.
Pam by the end of the film comes to accept herself as a whole person, mind and body. Though she had been thinking of quitting throughout the film, she was reluctant to allow herself be affectionate with Randy, as she had designated her body and sensuality to be solely for work. However, she recognises that Randy is not “another customer” and leaves the strip club in the middle of a dance to try and dissuade him from getting in the ring again. She accepts that she is getting older, and that Randy is willing to love her in her entirety, and with that recognition she is willing to do the same for him. But Randy does not see himself that way.
While his final step into the ring may be viewed as heroic, it may similarly be viewed as Randy giving his ailing body its last hurrah. He himself is aware of and acknowledges his body’s own limitations, in a heartbreaking speech before the final fight:
You know, if you live hard and play hard and you burn the candle at both ends, you pay the price for it. You know in this life you can lose everything that you love, everything that loves you. Now I don’t hear as good as I used to, and I forget stuff. And I ain’t as pretty as I used to be. But god damn it, I’m still standing here and I’m “The Ram.”
Randy does not view his body as a temple. He views his body, and by extension himself, as a “broken down piece of meat”, and though he knows that the harm he inflicts on his body is not good for him, he at least has control over the harm he inflicts on himself in the ring, while he cannot face the pain of getting hurt “out there”. The hurt of rejection, of aging, of mortality. If Randy is to feel pain, he is going to feel it on his own terms. If he’s going out, he’s going out his way, and not how nature tells him to.
While we often view the separation of mind and body, mastery of the body and, to a certain extent, the willingness to bear and inflict pain on the body, as being noble (both in reality and in art), Aronofsky, through his visual language and the story of Randy, tells a different story: separating ‘ourselves’ from our body and ignoring the realities of our physical existence is not living. It is, in fact, taking an active hand in our own death.
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On the whole, The Wrestler was well-received by the wrestling community for its dedication to the craft and physicality of the sport, with legendary wrestler and actor Roddy Piper reportedly weeping for joy at a screening of the film (Piper tragically died of a heart attack four years ago at the age of 61, just five years older than Rourke was at the time of filming). But no more than any great movie should do, The Wrestler has earned its place in the hearts of its audience, wrestling fans and laypeople alike, because of how the art, theme and story of the film touch a universal truth. From Aronosky’s mastery of cinema language to the magnificently committed performances of Marisa Tomei and especially Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler makes us conscious of ourselves as physical beings, an idea we mostly take for granted.
How often do we stop and consider that the wonder of the body is not just that it can accomplish great feats but that it can do anything at all? That it allows us to be in the world, to communicate, to express, to give and receive love? That our bodies in fact make us what we are?
All too often we treat our bodies merely as vessels for our bidding, and spectacles for ourselves and others. In The Wrestler, we see our bodies as more than that; our bodies are not just spectacles. They are marvels.
Take 2 Films 