Mickey and The Mouse

Review: The Wrestler + Slumdog Millionaire

You'll have to deal with my yin-yang, apples-oranges, Harold-Maude comparison, first because I'm lazy, second because they're the two strongest films I've seen this year. Neither was as visceral as The Dark Knight; nor have I felt their lingering presence as long as Revolutionary Road. I contend, though, The Wrestler and Slumdog Millionaire are more fully realized than their competitors (caveat: I'm seeing Milk tomorrow; all might change).

What do I mean by fully realized? They don't try to say more than they accomplish. The Wrestler is absolutely about one man: Mickey Rourke. The plot, in a way, is subtext to watching Rourke's Gloria Swanson career move. In his comeback, he's even more grotesque, a hulk of flesh and sinew lacking the brain behind the brawn. Rourke isn't an intellectual actor like Sean Penn. I'd swear at times, beneath the steroid-pumped biceps, the stringy surfer 'do, the sagging cheekbones, the deep-but-gentle mumble, he's not playing himself or anybody else. He's responding on instinct, letting the bloodshed and agony and self-loathing and determination and humor come as they are, whether he's hurling men about the ring or potato salad into a deli customer's hands. Marisa Tomei likewise feels real, and kudos to her for not shying away from the stripping. I didn't buy zonked-out semigoth Evan Rachel Wood, but Rourke seems to; one tear rolls down his cheek when he spends a day with her, and you gotta feel he didn't plan that or squirt eyedrops. He just gives it, whatever it is, no judgments, no fear.

Slumdog Millionaire, on the other hand, treats its actors like pawns in a larger chess game. This isn't a movie about subtlety, but why should it be? It's about the monopolizing charms of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and our fixation on Cinderella-story dreams come true. And in this little-engine-that-could of a movie, life imitates art. It's a fairy tale with the darkness of Grimm, in the slums of India, but the lavish sensationalism and reckless plotting and characterization of Bollywood. A lot of gimmicks stirred up could separate like unshaken salad dressing, leaving your hands oily, but Danny Boyle deserves credit for a wondrous melting-pot of fantasy. Praise, too, for not turning this into a morality tale. It pulses with the rhythm of pure cinema, in which a frame here, a point-of-view shot there, coalesce into a collective whole. Will it last? I have no answer. But somewhere, it is written.