Robinson’s career is certainly in the latter camp, but his personal life is even worse. He frequents a strip club, where he finds solace in the company of single mom Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), who is in much the same situation as Robinson. Ridiculed by clients who comment on her advancing age, Cassidy continues to hope for more dignified work to help provide for her child. She rebuffs Robinson’s advances—it’s club policy not to date customers—but finds in him a soul mate who tempts her to violate those rules.
Robinson is captive to his addictions—to performance-enhancing and recreational drugs, to alcohol, but most of all to the spotlight. His affection for Cassidy humanizes him, as does his attempts to reconcile with a daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), who is wary of his sudden interest in her life. But their delicate dance of reconciliation—at one point, they literally waltz together—can’t undo the shame and bitterness that Robinson and Stephanie, respectively, feel toward each other. Robinson’s confession to her, in which he acknowledges that he deserves to be shunned by her and left alone, contains an emotional rawness that may be the acting highlight of Rourke’s long career.
The camerawork here is challenging, following behind the characters, often from an over-the-shoulder perspective that, while not unusual to arthouse audiences familiar with the work of the Dardennes brothers (The Son), may tax mainstream audiences until they adjust to the rigorous style. The effect is to give the film a documentary-like immediacy.
The effect is to give the film a documentary-like immediacy, but it’s not without showy moments that may remind viewers of modern American cinematic classics: In one, we follow Robinson down a long corridor as he enters a new kind of ring with its own challenges. It’s similar to a lengthy shot in Martin Scorcese’s Goodfellas, as Henry Hill enters a swanky club and introduces his girlfriend to the glamorous side of gangster life. But in The Wrestler, Robinson’s new world isn’t an arena filled with screaming fans, nor an exotic entry into a new profession. It’s a long walk through a corridor that leads to a grocery store deli counter, where Robinson hopes to work after a health scare forces him to consider retiring from the ring.
Viewers won’t be surprised to learn that Robinson has a hard time leaving wrestling behind. “The world don’t [care] about me,” he explains to Cassidy before he enters the ring, against his doctor’s advice. Then Robinson addresses the crowd, giving a speech about professional purpose that might just as soon have come from Rourke the actor.
Christians who have put an old way of life behind them will be able to relate to Robinson’s struggles to do the same on a professional level, and to his attempts to atone for the wrongs he has committed against his daughter. They also will see the wreckage his absence has caused in her life, and what the seeds of mistrust have sown in their relationship. To Robinson, wrestling is his one true love, even as he recognizes that it’s a type of prison from which he can’t escape. It perpetuates his inability to function in the real world, and it provides an outlet for the disappointments in his personal life.
