Iron claw: the first summit of the 2024 cinema year (review)
Sean Durkin explores a family unit devoured from the inside through the tragic journey of a brotherhood of wrestlers. With its lively staging and brilliant interpretation, it already has all the makings of a classic.
“Let’s get to the facts in all their ugliness!“, belches wrestler Ric Flair in a TV spot aimed at the Von Erich brothers. The man, with peroxide blond hair, dressed like a Christmas tree, proudly displays his turquoise crocodile pumps, symbols of his glory. Everything is spectacle. Everything is true. Everything is false. Everything is allowed. We are in the middle of the eighties and the middle of the film of Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy, May Marlene). We then know a little more about the Von Erich siblings, whose dramatic and truthful trajectory the filmmaker traces. Kevin, Kerry, David and Mike, pushed by a grumpy and vengeful father, were responsible for achieving what the patriarch had not accomplished (becoming world wrestling champion) and breaking the supposed curse linked to their name.
The Von Erichs’ horizon was limited mainly to the fences of the family ranch in the heart of Texas. Durkin films this surrounding nature full of autumnal light, a sort of depopulated Eden whose sovereign and peaceful beauty hides an abyss. The “western” home also appears as a sanctuary. Vitality is weighed down from the inside by a credo where suffering can only be physical, where words only serve to accept the battles to be fought. “You never ask questions?“, Pam conveniently asks an awkward Kevin during their first flirtation. The star wrestler (Zac Efron formidable of wounded interiority) finds himself devitalized when he is not surrounded by his loved ones. Iron Claw is the story of an emotional disaster. In Durkin, the family unit inevitably devours the elements that compose it.
This drama is seen through the eyes of Kevin, the older brother on whom the Von Erichs’ hopes first rest. Body bloated with muscles, resigned face of the tortured, Kevin is a silent monster, a Freak like Tod Browning, his sensitivity is crushed by the spectacle he must offer of himself. Frightening shot of Zac Efron encumbered by his imposing shell in the doorway of the nursery room vainly searching for an attentive ear. The man climbs a mountain of resignations.
Wrestling, a spectator sport fully assuming its share of simulated blows and arranged victories, reinforces this feeling of psychological confiscation. In addition to his power and physical abilities, it is the ability to build a character that decides the popularity of the wrestler. So when Kevin, decked out in his bright clothes, has to record a spot to promote a fight, the young man is unable to find the right note. Through its staging of elegant classicism, the film remains in the wheel of this lucid anti-hero. The whole advances on a clear line, bathed in a relative torpor retaining as much as possible the outpouring of emotions.
Kevin therefore, but also Kerry (the brilliant Jeremy Allen White), David (Harris Dickinson, discovered in Without filter) or even the most fragile Mike (Stanley Simons) Everything is largely based on the charm of these pop-star-looking siblings whom the film keeps at a distance from the outside world. For a magnificent fade, Durkin superimposes their faces creating a hybrid form, a creature marked by the seal of destiny. On the other side of the mirror (here on the bank of a river), appeasement is still possible.
Iron Claw, the title takes the name of a Von Erich wrestling hold, consisting of crushing the opponent’s head using a hand made firm by the tension of the fingers. This claw (claw in vo) is the signature of the formidable father. The grim reaper is there, he prowls, hugging withered bodies, watching brothers fall. The facts are there, “in all their ugliness“, to which Durkin, in a paradoxical gesture, restores the tragic beauty.
By Sean Durkin. With Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson… Duration 2h12. Released January 24, 2024
