Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Wrestler
2008 · Darren Aronofsky · The Wrestler on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch how often you see the back of Randy's head. (camera)
Maryse Alberti rides at his shoulder, half a step behind, down corridors, into stockrooms, out to the trailer. You rarely get his face ahead of a scene. You follow him into it.
Payoff: You are put permanently at his back, which makes you a companion and keeps him alone in every crowded room. In the reading: dicisign. The reading calls this a dicisign: an image where you feel a camera present, watching a man watch his own world.
Notice which places in the film get saturated color. (light)
The New Jersey of strip malls, parking lots and off-season boardwalks is wintry and drained, shot on grainy Super 16. Only the ring and the strip club get hot performance light.
Payoff: Color marks the two places Randy is allowed to feel alive, and both of them require an audience.
Watch the upkeep: the tanning, the injections, the staples. (performance)
Rourke built the body for the part and the film sits inside its maintenance in real time. Randy absorbs things rather than acting on them. The posture carries the whole history.
Payoff: You read this man off his body and his labor, not off anything he ever says about himself. In the reading: cinema of the body. The reading calls this a cinema of the body: sense carried in postures and upkeep rather than in deeds or dialogue.
Look at what Randy owns: tights, tapes, a video game. (setting)
Peroxide hair, spandex and fringe, a hearing aid, hair-metal cassettes, and a Nintendo game with his own face on the box. Everything he keeps is from the 1980s.
Payoff: The props mark him as a relic. He lives inside a decade that stopped being current twenty years ago.
Watch the wrestlers plan their match in the locker room. (staging)
They agree the moves, the spots and the finish like colleagues, warm and practical about it, then go out and do real damage to each other. The concealed blades are shown, not hidden.
Payoff: The film takes the craft seriously. The fight is arranged and the injuries are not, and both stay true at once.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the back of his head. The camera decided to follow this man and never looks away from him.