By Anthony Kuzminski
Bruce Springsteen’s music has always had a cinematic arc to it. Over the course of his career he has given life to visceral characters we invest in. As you listen to a Bruce Springsteen song, you play it out in your head imagining it as a scene in a larger than life poignant epic. It’s this exact reason that I never felt that Springsteen’s music videos did his music justice. If there was ever an artist who clearly didn’t need the use of video, it’s Springsteen. Ironically, over the first few decades of his career, he composed virtually nothing for film. He stole the title of “Born in the U.S.A.” from a Paul Schrader script and after its success he gave him a new song, “Light of Day”, but it was not performed by Springsteen. It wasn’t until late 1993 that sat down and truly composed with a film in mind, Philadelphia. What he created was a gasping tale of inner isolation and while it was written specifically for the first mainstream Hollywood film dealing with the crisis of AIDS, Springsteen managed to transpose the limits of the song and wrote something that anyone could relate to. The spare instrumentation (with nary a guitar in sight) crept up your sleeve when you weren’t noticing and let an indelible impression. Over the next fifteen-years, Springsteen gave songs to Tim Robbins (“Dead Man Walkin’”) and John Sayles (“Lift Me Up”); however none could match “Streets of Philadelphia” in regards to impact…until now.
Mickey Rourke has had his fair share of ups and downs over the last twenty-years and yet, there isn’t another soul on the planet who could embody the character of “The Ram” in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. This is indie filmmaking at its best and the entire film haunts me. We’re all brought into this world amidst love, however, what happens when life doesn’t work out? Much like the characters that embody most of Springsteen’s work, “The Ram” finds himself looking back on his life trying to figure out where it all went wrong. The journey the film takes you on is touching, volatile and heart wrenching. I can not get the last ten-minutes of the film out of my head.
Rourke and Springsteen struck up a friendship a long time ago and Rourke reached out to Springsteen for a song. What Springsteen delivered was a song that is pretty great on its own, but within the context of the film, it becomes something much more. One of the reasons I have had a hard time warming to some of Springsteen’s work sans the E Street Band is the lack of muscle in the arrangements. It is almost an all or nothing approach with his songs. He has struggled with the “in between” sonics of his recordings (although he did well with the 2005 album Devils and Dust). Upon my initial listens of the song, I felt it was a very good song, but the above issues kept it from being a classic in my book. However, one view of the trailer for the film and that all changed. I know people who would never go see this type of film or are Springsteen fans and they welled up. It’s a stunning achievement to create something for a film and have the pairing of the two elevate already astonishing material.
The trailer alone may be the greatest music video of Springsteen’s work to date. However, the song takes on a whole new dimension in the film. After two hours of headbanging classics, the film stunningly fades to black after a unforgettable final image and stays there before you quietly hear “1,2,3,4” and the plaintive strumming of an acoustic guitar. The song is integral to the film and vice versa. When I saw The Wrestler, everyone stayed in their seats and let the song enrapture them long after the film was done. When the Oscar nominations were announced last week, it was a shock to find out that not only was Springsteen not nominated for “Best Original Song”, but that there were only three nominees. Last year there were three nominees from one film! The Academy has had its fair share of blunders in its history, but for me this is one of the biggest. You have a song written specifically for the film and it just doesn’t enhance an already magnanimous film, but it stays with you long after the lights go out. Entertainment is fleeting these days. It’s rare to find a work of art that doesn’t just tell a story, but reflects on society as a whole and stays inside your psyche for not just hours, but days, weeks, months and years later. The Academy should be ashamed of themselves for missing the boat on this one. However, at the end of the day, award shows are pointless, as ultimately it is the art that lives on. In Springsteen’s case, people will be moved by “The Wrestler” for years and that’s far more important than any trivia question.
Anthony Kuzminski is a Chicago based writer and Special Features Editor for the antiMusic Network and his daily writings can be read at The Screen Door and can be contacted at thescreendoor AT gmail DOT com.
