Redemption in the ring

Is The Wrestler, with its insistent Christlike parallels, a story of sanctification? | Sam Thielman

Mickey Rourke (AP/Photo by Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight)

Around 30 minutes into Darren Aronofsky's fantastic new movie, The Wrestler, something profoundly strange happens to Christians. As washed-up matman Randy "the Ram" Robinson (an amazing Mickey Rourke) sits with his friend Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), she takes a look at his beefy, punctured frame, to which a recent opponent has taken a nail gun, and begins to quote Isaiah: "He was pierced for our transgressions," she recalls, having seen The Passion of the Christ and liked it. "He was bruised for our iniquities."

Nobody makes a reference like that by accident, least of all Aronofsky, whose meticulous films are always brimming with minute but significant details.

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December 27, 2008, Vol. 23, No. 26

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