The Wrestler

It's easy to take this movie as entirely depressing, a slow spiral down an obvious and inevitable drain. The film certainly offers plenty of reasons one could interpret it that way.

I didn't, however. I certainly found it generally bleak, but at the end I felt that the main character, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, had for a moment actually overcome his physical limitations and still had a tiny shot at overcoming his character flaws. You wouldn't want to bet that he would, but I felt he might.

Rourke could have attacked this role with scene-chewing gusto and probably still earned accolades, but to my surprise he gave a generally nuanced performance, turning broad only when in his wrestler persona (or reverting to it, as in an inevitable blow-up in a store).

When some people want to attack broad topics, they paint with broad strokes. Another approach is to keep the strokes so fine and the focus so tight that only over time do you realize that the work in front of you applies way beyond its surface topic. Darren Aronofsky, the director of this movie, chose the latter path here, and for me it worked superbly. I saw echoes here of many lives, including my own, and I'll ponder the film for some time to come.

I definitely recommend this one, but with the warning that most people who go to see it will probably not emerge with as favorable an opinion of it as mine.