The programmers and juries at film festivals, the critics and the bloggers, the tanned yet shadowy creatures who vote for the Academy Awards — sure, it’s important to get these folks to see and love your movie if you want it to be successful. And judging by its achievements thus far — top prize at the Venice film fest, triumphant bows in Toronto and New York, a growing influx of citations and much Oscar buzz for Mickey Rourke’s heroic lead performance — The Wrestler has got ’em all onside already.

Yet, for director Darren Aronofsky, it’s just as important that his film mean something to the people whose hard-knock lives inspired it.

“We had our first legend see the film the other night,” says Aronofsky in an interview, over the phone from his hometown of New York City. “Rowdy Roddy Piper saw it and he was deeply, deeply touched by it. And for Mickey and me, that was a really great gift because we had so much respect for him. He told us, ‘This isn’t my story, but it is my story.’ He was pretty much filled with tears.”

That there’s so much humanity and not a hint of condescension in its portrayal of an aging wrestler is one quality that makes The Wrestler so remarkable. Written by Robert Siegel and based on an idea Aronofsky had nurtured since the early ’90s, it stars Rourke as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a former star still eking out a living with small-time matches. His hopes for a comeback are threatened by a health crisis, his body showing the strain of so many slams, strikes and smashes. Though generous with his fans and his fellow wrestlers, Randy leads an otherwise lonely existence. Thus does he reach out to a stripper friend (Marisa Tomei) and his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) as he tries to create a life for himself outside the ring, a goal that might not be tenable.

Any similarity between the struggles faced by The Ram and by the man who plays him is hardly accidental. Aronofsky says that The Wrestler was very much written with Rourke in mind. It’s not a minority opinion that the 52-year-old actor’s own professional and personal troubles prevented him from the fulfilling the potential he displayed in his ’80s heyday, which is why his performance here has been so rapturously received.

“That’s been the craziest part of the trip, learning how many closet Mickey Rourke fans there are,” says Aronofsky with a laugh. “So many people are just excited to hear that he’s done good work and they are very curious about seeing him do the work. I knew I felt that way but I didn’t feel like many other people did, especially the financiers who turned this movie down because of Mickey Rourke.”

Rourke’s bad reputation may have spooked the moneybags but Aronofsky, who shot the movie independently in New Jersey last January on a very tight budget of US$6 million, knew he had to have him. As he says now, “Somewhere deep in my gut something was telling me that it had to be Mickey because I turned down all other opportunities to make it without him.”

While Rourke recognized what a role like The Ram could mean to his career (already on the upswing after solid turns in Sin City and Domino), the ex-pugilist wasn’t sure if he could commit to playing a man in tights. “Boxers have an issue with wrestling,” Aronofsky notes. “They find it a mockery of the ring. So he definitely had a lot of issues with that. But he liked the idea of having an opportunity to collaborate with me. I think that kept us together.”

Developing the necessary physique was another challenge. Says the director, “That was one of my big concerns for Mickey: could he actually have the physicality? Normally he’s about 195 lbs. and that’s far from a pro wrestler. But he very quickly started to show me results. He spent about six months in the gym, lifting twice a day, eating 5,000 calories a day, and basically transformed himself and his body. He put on 35 pounds of muscle to pull it off.”

And though he asked Rourke to bulk up, Aronofsky ended up doing the opposite with his own filmmaking, paring down to a stark, unfussy, verité style far removed from the frenzied cutting of Requiem for a Dream and the rococo compositions of The Fountain. He’s not displeased to see The Wrestler earn comparisons with the much-revered works of the Dardenne brothers and cites Tony Richardson’s The Entertainer and Barbara Loden’s Wanda as other influences.

“I just really wanted to approach things from a very, very honest and objective point of view,” Aronofsky explains. “I didn’t really want to do things in the typical stylized way that I had approached things in the past. And Mickey’s whole approach to acting sort of mirrored that.”

The results are a movie and a performance that are uncommonly lean, visceral and powerful. No wonder The Wrestler is entering awards season on such a triumphant note. Not that Aronofsky made the movie to show up naysayers who thought Rourke couldn’t deliver. “You don’t ever make a movie to spite people,” he says. “You make a movie because you believe in it and you’re passionate about it. If other people don’t believe in it, you’ve just got to keep moving forward.”

He laughs: “When it does work out, it definitely feels good!” 

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