The Wrestler uses Nintendo as a narrative device

If you haven't seen "The Wrestler" and you're a fan of, well, good movies about interesting people, see it. Nothing revolutionary, but great performances and an excellent melding of themes with settings.

But Cut Scene readers might also be interested for the way it uses a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) as a narrative device. Specifically, Mickey Rourke plays a washed up old pro wrestler who's now suffering for his success, alienated from his family, living in a trailer park, punishing himself mentally and physically by wrestling in third-rate local matches, etc. One of the most poignant, and saddest, moments of the film comes when he fires up an NES in his trailer.

First, just the idea of a grown man playing an original NES -- and not out of nostalgia -- signals how sad his economic circumstances are. Perhaps equivalent to turning on an 8-track player as your only way to listen to music. But much more dramatic is the fact that he's playing a videogame starring... himself. It's an old wrestling game featuring his character, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, in all his 8-bit glory. What better sign is there of faded stardom than seeing your visage in an old NES game?

I thought it was very cool that videogames have now reached the point in our culture that, even in an independenet film aimed at sophisticated audiences, they can be used as a narrative device for which we can assume virtually everyone will understand the meaning. If you ask me, that's convergence, much more than the latest movie studio starting a videogame division.

Hopefully we'll see more use of videogame as narrative devices, especially because as I was watching it I was thinking how easy it must have been. I bet one guy could have made '80s state-of-the-art videogame animations in Flash in, what, a day or two? Simple enough for even this low-budget indie movie to afford.

Update: Variety critic Tom Chick, writing on his Fidgit blog, points out that the NES demo is followed up by a very spot on, and meaningful conversation between The Ram and the 12 year-old kid he was playing his wrestling game with about "Call of Duty 4." Tom even took the time to transcribe the convo. Check it out.