The Commute (2011)
Ride with professional wrestler Giant Bernard on his 12,000-mile monthly journey from his home in the USA to the ring in Japan. Using an innovative fusion of image and sound, The Commute captures a family man's struggle to balance the brutal and the beautiful.
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The Commute, like Darren Aronofsky's 2008 film The Wrestler, contrasts a wrestler's public and private persona. However, this combatant is not tragic or self destructive. Most affecting for me is his voice when he growls and threatens during his news conferences as opposed to when he speaks softly to his wife and little daughter. I came away liking Matthew Bloom very much and hoping he finds a different career before long. The film has some shots of Bloom walking through the desert, apparently to give his Commute a symbolic dimension, but I think the scenes of him and his family sitting on the sofa say it all. The film was entered in the Lake Arrowhead Film Festival in 2011 and I think it's fair to say it was very well received.