The Wrestler

Saw The Wrestler. I noticed a neat thematic thing: the wrestler's arch-nemesis is "The Ayatollah," a relic of bygone troop-rallying. The climactic re-match mirrors the throwback-ery of the film itself, which is about a man whose strength has made him vulnerable. An inherently pathetic genre is made all the more cutting by the refinements of modern cinema. Even though I could predict the punches, I couldn't see how hard they would hit. A near-final shot of an empty gap in the curtains acts as a final, awful moment. Not quite as tough as Requiem for a Dream (another Aronofsky movie) but boy was trying.