The Wrestler -- Life is Not Fair

I enjoyed the Wrestler very much. On the way over there I put Leonard's Cohen "The Future" on. Rebecca Loudon talked about this song on her blog a while back so I bought it. This is a great religious song. A few moments later Cohen croaks out "Give me crack and anal sex" and my wife, Edith, gives me a bad look (It's her first time with "The Future" which Cohen, "the little Jew who wrote the bible," says he's seen---and it's "murder."). O, well.

Marisa Tomei's naked in the Wrestler. Naked a lot. And good naked. Forty four year old Marisa sure looks good. Damned good. But this isn't why I really liked The Wrestler.

(Aside: here's a link to Marisa Tomei on Chickipedia. According to its description Chickipedia is the world’s largest web-based, women-based, wiki-based database of hot chicks on the planet. It is entirely user generated, making it the first female-only encyclopedia of the people, by the people, and for the people. Chickipedia is not your grandpa’s encyclopedia.)

But, again, I'm not here to talk about hot chicks. Or the movie's weaknesses (cliché characters, etc.). This movie really worked for me. Especially the ending.

This is a movie where everything sets up perfectly for a Good Old Happy Ending but the filmmakers don't give to you. They don't even give you a real Tragic Ending: dead body in the ring getting smaller and smaller as the camera rises up into the rafters to some pathetic music of foreign women wailing. No God on his cross. No real rising.

This is not to say that The Wrestler doesn't leave the viewer without hope. It does. In its black-and-white easy-symbol-play it does.

So, we left the Wrestler pretty satisfied and drove on home (No Leonard Cohen, though).

But then my world just fell apart.

Looking for "Wrestler" info and pictures online I found out that Mickey Rourke wasn't the first choice for the lead. Nicolas Cage was supposedly in talks that broke down.

God damn it! (I feel like King Lear out in the rain). Life is just not fair.

The Wrestler's a wonderful movie. But, damnit, I want to see the Nicolas Cage version too. That's a movie I have to see. That is the movie I can barely live without.

It's Springtime, damnit, and I want my cake and eat it too, damnit. Razor blades are fluttering inside me.