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before the rains

Review: The Wrestler, Before the Rains, Transporter 3, Empties and The Last Great Snail Chase

By Cinema, Reviews

I’d like to think of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler as a kind of grand meta­phor for America, a bank­rupt and exhausted old cul­ture, coast­ing to the fin­ish line on the fumes of former glor­ies, unable or unwill­ing to rein­vent itself des­pite every sig­nal telling it to change. In one, of sev­er­al, heart­break­ing scenes Mickey Rourke’s Randy “The Ram” takes his estranged daugh­ter to the aban­doned and derel­ict amuse­ments of Asbury Park where he hopes to rekindle memor­ies of hap­pi­er times but the moment of grace is short-lived. Of course, it may just be a film about a wrest­ler, I’ll give you that.

The Ram was a big star in the 80s when MTV and pro-wrestling col­lided, but now he lives in a trail­er and wrestles in school halls. And wrest­ling, too, has changed. It’s still show­busi­ness but now it’s degrad­ing and dehu­man­ising, the pub­lic bay­ing for even more blood and demand­ing ever great­er sacrifices.

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