Wrestling with Oscar
by Nicole Wallenbrock
Mickey Rourke as Randy “The Ram” Robinson in Aranofsky’s The Wrestler
Although I long ago rejected the idea that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could pick the best films of any given year, I have continued to be fascinated by the Oscar extravaganza and its voting process. Each of the films has a specific team to lobby for nominations, proving again that money and hobnobbing are the backbone of the industry, even when it claims to be about talent. However, in all sincerity, my preferences last year were for the winners. This might suggest that my taste has become more Hollywood, but I believe it actually demonstrates that 2008 was simply an “experimental” year for the Oscars. There Will be Blood (best actor) and No Country for Old Men (best supporting actor, best picture) were transgressive westerns that challenged American values, and last year’s best actress winner (Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Môme) was the antithesis of Hollywood, a French actress starring in a French film!
Yet this year, the experimentation in the best picture category is no more than an English take on Bollywood, Daniel Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. If tropes abound in the love story, Boyle is more successful in making the luscious colors and sounds of Bollywood, one of the world’s highest grossing film industries, palatable for a western audience. In this manner, Slumdog’s success in the United States is an interesting counterpoint to the recent “American West” focus in Hollywood of late. As the western was the prevalent theme in 2008, this year’s theme for two best picture nominees (Frost/Nixon, Milk) is seventies politics. These films offer simplistic liberal perspectives on the past that Americans can apply to the more recent secrecy of the horrible George W. Bush administration, and the current flourish of Proposition 8 homophobia. The fourth nominee, The Reader, was ensured the Academy’s attention, as it is a Holocaust film with glossy production design. Indeed, it is difficult in a year of political correctness to guess which film will attract the most guilt, Milk, Frost/Nixon, or The Reader. Perhaps it is in this moment of American malaise and culpability that an exotic feel-good such as Slumdog Millionaire can win the Oscar for best picture.
The winner of the best actor award likewise represents an amalgamation of talent, politics, money, and direction. Although last year’s winner, Daniel Day Lewis, playing an oil tycoon, was a sure pick, this year’s winner is less certain. Both Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler and Sean Penn in Milk seem equally deserving of the statuette. But if you want to try to predict the winner, keep in mind 1993, when Tom Hanks’ performance in Philadelphia beat out Anthony Hopkins (Remains of the Day), Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List), and Daniel Day-Lewis (In the Name of the Father) for best actor award. The Academy clearly tends to judge its actors as much for the political content of their performances as for their acting skills, making Penn’s perfect portrayal of Harvey Milk — the first openly gay mayor of a major US city — a potential favorite. Surprisingly, Clint Eastwood was not nominated for the Oscar this year, but his performance in Gran Torino did win him the National Board Review award for best actor, as well as a nomination for the Golden Globe. Eastwood’s elderly veteran in Gran Torino is not unlike Mickey Rourke’s middle-aged wrestler, since both performances ask the audience to draw on their own familiarity with the actors’ younger roles. Both cast their past career into relief as they act in films written specifically for their prototype, allowing for an egotistical (even when self-deprecating) performance and prodigal reception. In the comfort of nostalgia, the audience may recall their childhood or adolescence at the movies, while celebrating the screen icons of yester-year in a contemporary mold. With that said here are two reviews of stellar reflexive performances in their less worthy films:
The Wrestler
The hype surrounding The Wrestler was enough to kill any film; “Mickey is back!” “The best-actor Oscar!” Yet in all honesty, without the hype I would not have paid the admission to watch men in tights and wigs smash each other to a pulp. In fact, as a bourgeois ABD yogini female, the WWF is something I have carefully avoided my entire life. But on that note, the film is an insightful commentary on the male population who seek such entertainment, on class and education boundaries that promote it, and on the effects such “sports” have on the wrestlers themselves. One should be forewarned, according to the film’s gripping realism, professional wrestlers do not fake all of the blood and back breaking (or rather some of the faking is actually done with razors).
For this reason the film is ingenious and difficult to watch. In the film’s first half, the audience intimately witnesses the wreckage done to Rourke’s “Randy the Ram.” His tightly framed face screams agony and repression louder than the referee’s megaphone. Close-ups of his limbs twisting and then pounding down (the sound design is grueling) left me squirming with sympathy in my seat. To this extent Aronofsky has surpassed and banalized violence in cinema; for rather than presenting us with the realism of violence in war, The Wrestler presents us with the realism of violence in performance — within a performance.
The casting of Rourke as Randy makes the paradigm complete. Rourke, like Randy, enjoyed considerable success in the ‘80s as a bad boy. In addition, though Rourke never wrestled, he enjoyed another concussion inducing sport, boxing, and did brutal damage to his brain and face. Although the basic storyline is often trite (for instance, an overacted angry daughter, Evan Rachel Wood, seems to emerge only as an afterthought), Rourke is so compelling in this role that the camera and the audience can scarcely focus on secondary matters. Therefore, there is barely enough space to contemplate another age-limited industry, stripping, though Pam (Marisa Tomei) skillfully demonstrates the other sex’s more typical compromise. If you are one for ‘80s nostalgia, you will enjoy all the hair-metal hits that might have been played at wrestling events, as well as the superb score co-written by Slash. The film closes with an almost too appropriate Bruce Springsteen song “One-Trick Pony” providing the perfect finale to a picture about an underclass of the entertainment industry. To this extent The Wrestler can be compared not only to Rocky and Raging Bull, but also to Boogie Nights.
Gran Torino
The Gran Torino in the title of Eastwood’s latest film refers to a vintage ’72 car protected by a feeble garage and the gun power of its owner, Korean War vet Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood.) Everyone longs for a chance to drive the mint condition classic, including Walt’s materialistic son and suburban nightmare family, his painfully shy teenage neighbor, and the violent gang of Hmong gangsters, who like Walt, tote guns. Just as everyone in the film yearns to cruise the prized vintage Ford, Gran Torino’s target audience craves vintage Eastwood. Strumming memories of Dirty Harry, Eastwood as Walt delivers countless versions of “Make my day” (now the word “gook” is added at the end) and squints with every bit of the same severity.
Although the dialogue in Nick Schenk’s first screenplay frequently proves amateur, the plot itself offers a modern if simplistic view of American society in 2008: Senior citizen Walt, who embodies the racism of his generation, has outlived his wife and is the only white man left in his deteriorating, now Chinese, neighborhood. At long last Walt confronts his prejudice when he accidentally becomes friends with the Chinese family next door while protecting (by chance) their awkward teenage son Thao (Bee Vang) from Hmong gangsters. The choice of the Hmongs as a community in anguish reveals a Hollywood orientalism (the Hmong culture makes for an exotic contrast to Walt’s, and the audience’s, middle-American values.) However, the Hmong decision was primarily practical: unlike “gook” apparently, in Hollywood the “n” word is still unacceptable, and even at seventy-eight, Eastwood can tower over the diminutive Hmongs.
In Gran Torino, the elderly but fit Eastwood recaptures the allure of his past roles. Though Eastwood was thirty-seven years younger when he developed the iconographic Harry Callahan under Don Siegal, and younger still when he built his tough cowboy appeal in Rawhide, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, in Gran Torino the cold call to justice is rejuvenated as a crotchety old man. If Eastwood’s lines and performance are predictable, they are doubly comic, for each time nostalgia is retrieved an element of spoof results. (In fact, at the screening I saw the Union Square audience roared with laughter at each of Walt’s threats and bigoted insults.)
David Schwartz in his interview complimented Eastwood by saying Gran Torino resembled classic Hollywood. Yes, there are many long shots of the neighborhood, the story holds a moral, and the characters (other than Walt) are flat types. However, the film is primarily a vehicle for Eastwood (and his public) to relive his glory-days. Eastwood has perfected the delivery and timing of the quiet, vengeful rebel and is further aided by a script tailor-made for him (according to Eastwood, screen-writer Schenk hunted down his agent.) Gran Torino does not rival any of Eastwood’s recent directorial gems, (Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Flags of our Fathers) but it makes an interesting bookend to the angry screen icon’s long career.
