One recent night, I watched the films, The Wrestler (2008) and"Lars and the Real Girl (2007). I couldn't help but see some connections between the two widely different films...The Wrestler featured Mickey Rourke in an amazing performance, but it was a basically a showcase of human wreckage. And it all stemmed from these delusions the main character, Randy "the Ram," was perpetuating in his life. You saw the very unromantic behind-the-scenes view of his wrestling work, from steroids to self-tanners, from a failed relationship with his daughter to a failing crush on a a stripper (Marisa Tomei). Yet there was still an art to his character and his wrestling as a craft. For all professional wrestling's carnage - whether it be a staple gun wound, heart attack or colostomy bag - Randy provides his fans a dream, an illusion of something greater: strength/courage, the "bad boy" image, a sense of immortality. In the end, his wrestling persona is a weapon, repelling anyone from being close to him, leaving behind human shrapnel, both literally and figuratively.
In Lars and the Real Girl, Lars (Ryan Gosling) also lives under a profound delusion. Yet unlike the Wrestler, his relationship with a doll he ordered on the Internet creates meaningful connections with people throughout the town. Out of concern for Lars, everyone in the town "goes along" with the idea of Bianca being real. Before long, she finds her way into the beauty shop, onto the local school board, and her schedule filled with volunteer shifts at the children's hospital. Because of the presence of Bianca, what was once a lonely existence filled with stilted conversation for Lars gives way to deep, meaningful conversations with family and friends, about love, adulthood, his parents' deaths, and his fears of physical touch. It's strange, but in the end, people are not only attracted to Lars, but he leaves behind a wake of stronger human connections wherever he goes. In the end, his delusions act as a kind of healing process for his family, his town and himself.
Ultimately, and ironically, the Wrestler goes through a kind of self-realization at the end of the film as well. His words at the end of the film: "In this life you can lose everything you love, everything that loves you. A lot of people told me that I'd never wrestle again, the only one that's gonna tell me when I'm through doing my thing, is you people here." Within moments of uttering those words, he leaps off the ropes, perhaps to his demise, succumbing to the toll that wrestling has bore on his life and the lives around him. At the end of Lars, a preacher says of Bianca, Lars' doll, "We are here to celebrate Bianca's extraordinary life. From her wheelchair, Bianca reached out and touched us all, in ways we could never have imagined." It's ironic that an inanimate doll can touch people in ways a real-life professional wrestler cannot.
