Last night, Neal and I watched “The Wrestler.” We both wanted to see it for a couple of reasons. It was written and direction by Darren Aronofsky, who was also the director of “Requiem for a Dream,” one of Neal’s favorite movies. I liked Mickey Rourke, the actor that plays the lead, “Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson,” back in the 80s before he had plastic surgery to fix his face after a short career in boxing.

He won a Golden Globe for best actor last Sunday, and his speech at the award show really got to me. He’s fallen on hard times since the 80s, (drugs, divorce, etc.) and that’s one reason this movie is getting so much attention. My favorite part of his speech was when he thanked his dogs, saying “I’d like to thank all my dogs. The ones that are here, the ones that aren’t here anymore because sometimes when a man’s alone, that’s all you got is your dog. And they’ve meant the world to me.”

Here’s the IMDB.com site for The Wrestler, which gives an overview of the movie.

Basically, the movie is about a professional wrestler (you know, WWE, WWF-type stuff). He was really famous in the 80s, but now his body is failing him and he wrestles in high school arenas and supplements his income by working in an Acme grocery store. He’s in pain, poor, alone, estranged from his daughter, and seeks companionship with Cassidy, a stripper (Marisa Tomei).

The movie’s budget was insanely low, like $6 million from what Neal found. There are a couple of scenes in a grocery store and Neal read that the movie didn’t have enough money to shut down the grocery store, so all the people ordering food at the deli counter are real customers. There’s a super amazing (yet heartbreaking) scene in an American Legion building, and it was so real, with the yellow glow of the fluorescent lights and wood paneled walls, it broke my heart.

I don’t want to give anything away, but this movie was seriously amazing. Randy knows what the sport is doing to his body, his health, and he’s not naive. He knows he’s alone, and a loser. He knows exactly what the sport is doing to him, but that’s all he knows, so he wrestles anyway. I mean, it’s truly heartbreaking. The script is great. You wouldn’t expect a professional wrestler to be really deep, and he’s not. He’s real. Upon seeing his estranged daughter, he doesn’t give her lines. He simply says “I just don’t want you to hate me.” But Mickey Rourke says it so well.  True Aronofsky-style, don’t expect a happy ending with everything tied up in a bow. Life isn’t like that, and neither is this movie.

What’s amazing is that Mickey Rourke’s life has been very much like Randy’s. Check out his bio and you’ll see the similarities. But whether his live mirrors Randy’s or not, he is simply an amazing actor in this role. Amazing. I shed a couple of tears at several times in the movie, but when the movie was over, and Bruce Springsteen’s song came on, I felt my face and realized I’d been crying for the last 10 minutes of the movie and didn’t realize it.

Mickey Rourke and the whole cast deserve every accolade they receive. And you need to see this movie.