I have never been a fan of Darren Aronofsky, the Sundance golden child responsible for some of the most pretentious films in recent memory. His PI was an obscure mediation on the mysteries of the universe. He also created THE FOUNTAIN, one of the more painful movie experiences of my life. The guy just seems to be climbing up his own ass with every successive film.

Now he’s proved me wrong. THE WRESTLER is one of the best films of the year.

Mickey Rourke stars as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, an aging 80′s wrestling star who has been cast into the abyss by age and a hard-partying lifestyle. He works small town wrestling matches in junky civic centers, a far cry from his glory days at Madison Square Gardens. To pay his rent in the trailer park, Randy is forced to work in a grocery store when time permits, humiliating himself  in order to stay alive and pursue his fading dreams. Utterly alone, rejected by nearly everyone except a kindly stripper named Cassidy (Marissa Tomei), Randy shambles through the tatters of his life searching for meaning and comfort.

Names like Hulk Hogan are the huge, financially profitable public face of professional wrestling, but I cannot recall another movie that looks behind the fame of the very few and uncompromisingly stares at the thousands of wrestlers who end up broken and faded in a world that never loved them. The world they live in is grimy, outlandish, and stripped of dignity. For many of these wrestlers, they have nothing else upon which to pin their hopes for a future, so they submit to nightly beatings in order to survive.

As Randy, Rourke gives a stunning and torturous performance. Far removed from his days as an up-and-coming superhunk actor, Rourke allows himself to be completely barren before Aronofsky’s unflinching lens. Rourke’s face, battered by years of hard living, is the perfect canvas for the devastation of Randy’s painful life. Nearly fifty, Rourke still manages to perform amazing feats of acrobatic skill in the believable fight sequences. But it is in the quiet moments when Rourke really shines. Forced to work behind a deli counter, Rourke perfectly captures the quiet and humiliating desperation of Randy’s plight. It is the best performance of 2008.

Equally shocking is Marissa Tomei, who resurrects her lost career as Randy’s stripper friend Cassidy. Tomei, now an aged and faded movie star, allows herself to be shorn of her vanity. Tomei reveals stunning layers of dejection and self-loathing as her character does what she can to support her boys. It is one of Tomei’s best performances in a career rightly praised.

While the performances are extraordinary, my highest praise goes to Aronofsky. His previous films were technically complex and highly stylized affairs. This is particularly true of THE FOUNTAIN, which went for an almost picture-book type of glowing cinematography that utterly failed the film. Here, Aronofsky removes the trickery and stylistic nonsense. Instead, he adopts an almost camcorder-style cinematography that lends immediacy and intimacy previously unseen in Aronofsky’s work. The film’s style is reminiscent of the realism movement of the seventies, and it works brilliantly. One shot in particular, a long tracking shot of Randy entering the grocery store deli to start his day, is one of my favorite shots of the year; it perfectly captures Randy’s lost hopes, while also emphasizing the drudgery of his current predicament.

THE WRESTLER is easily one of the top three films of 2008, and deserves a nom for Best Picture. Rourke easily deserves the Oscar for Best Actor. Tomei should get a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. But the one person most deserving of recognition – Aronofsky himself – has gone mostly unmentioned. Hopefully the Academy will come to their senses in time.

This is one of the best films of the year.