In Bangladesh, the sport of boli khela — or the wrestler game — is a meticulous, methodical affair, a tone Iqbal H. Chowdhury re-creates for his debut feature, “The Wrestler.” Straddling a line between observational and oblique, the film seems designed to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure, gesturing toward masculine boundaries in a rural, often overcast coastal setting without fully articulating them.
In leaving much of his story up to intuition — and taking a climactic turn toward the surreal — Chowdhury crafts a scrupulous slow-burn drama about a kind of obsession that, despite being opaque, comes off as entirely tragic. Its central focus is the elderly wrestler/wrestling trainer Moju (Nasir Uddin Khan), an aging fisherman whose frustrations with his lack of recent catch lead him to challenge local champion Dofor (AKM Itmam). Then again, this economic woe is just one of several possibilities pushing Moju toward certain self-destruction (it’s the only one he comes close to verbalizing), because when “The Wrestler” begins, he already seems to be far along this emotional path.
Moju’s son Shafu (Angel Noor) has recently married a woman named Rashu (Priyam Archi), and he takes his frustrations out on them as well, though they’re both concerned for his mental state and physical well-being, given his new pursuit. However, Shafu and Rashu’s relationship proves illuminating too, reflecting the movie’s themes of masculinity in precise ways. The first we see of Shafu is in a mirror as he applies eyeliner, much to Moju’s chagrin. Whenever he returns at night, he ignores Rashu’s hesitant advances and sleeps on a floormat instead, cocooning himself with a mosquito net. Whatever the reality therein — whether Shafu is a closeted queer man, or simply rejects all masculine expectations — he cordons himself off in the process.
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The deft symbolism of this mosquito net, as a self-imposed prison, ripples through the rest of the film, especially in its quietest moments. Much of the movie is composed of eerie stillness, and lengthy and considered takes. These are the kind where “nothing happens,” and yet, so much does. Wrestlers often sit around a small pub and let the glow of Bangladeshi romance classics on TV wash over them in silence (like Mostofa Anwar “Kashem Malar Prem”). These scenes take on a pulsing irony — given the gruff violence inherent to the men’s hobby — and they make even the wide-open coastal setting feel like a liminal space scored mostly be gentle waves, assisted by sparse, phantasmagorical notes from composter Ranadas Badsha.
Once the consequences of Moju’s challenge become the movie’s focus, the film goes full-tilt with these surrealist notions. On one hand, this makes its characters’ underlying motives feel even more opaque. On the other hand, every action, inaction and reaction remains uncannily familiar, making Chowdhury’s restrained approach feel like the right one. His rare moments of close up and formal flourishes (like action in super-slow motion) strikes like lightning in the process, but for the most part, his camera remains at a distance, peering in on its characters in order to scrutinize masculine form while trying to suss out masculine function.