(Chances are good this post is going to be a little spoilery, if you haven’t seen the movie. Consider yourself warned.)
The tragedy of Randy “The Ram” isn’t his fall from grace. It’s not the significant decrease in paychecks he received after transitioning from working major arenas in front of thousands of fans to a few hundred people in a bingo hall in South Philadelphia.
Most people would say the tragedy is that he held on too long, he didn’t know when to hang up the boots and cut his losses. Ultimately, though, I don’t think that’s the case either.
We all know what it feels like to be around with someone who’s overstayed their welcome. It’s that person in your creative writing workshop who has gone on far too long about their decision to end every sentence in a preposition, or the old man who lulls you into lowering your defenses with talk of football before busting out an hour-long sermon in the only diner in town that still lets you smoke.
If you’re paying attention to “The Wrestler,” that’s not what’s happening at all. It’s not that people aren’t interested in “The Ram,” it’s only that there are fewer of them. Sure, he’s not the superstar he once was, but he’s still able to perform in front of an audience who treats him like he is as big as he was a decade (or more) before that.
And I’m okay with that. I don’t see the problem in someone burning themselves out doing something they love, as long as they’re realistic in their expectations. “The Wrestler” ends before the probable point in Randy’s career where the crowds aren’t dwindling, where they’ve all together stopped showing up.
I’m not sure how he’d handle it. I’m sure it would hurt, but I think there’s a point where you take your boots, go home and deal with that pain privately. Maybe he’d be able to step away, maybe he wouldn’t. But as long as there were people asking him to do what he loved to do, I don’t think you can fault him for doing it.
If they would stop asking and he would go home… I don’t think you can fault him for sitting by the phone and hoping they want to see him wrestle again.
The tragedy comes when you don’t realize how silly it is to throw yourself through a table trying to earn the cheers of an empty arena.
