The Feel Bad Movie of the Year
Sports films are rarely just about the sports themselves. Of course there are some, like Moneyball, for example, which focus on the technicalities of the sport (though still not the gameplay) — but for the most part the activity in question provides a necessary and inimitable backdrop (but backdrop nonetheless) to an otherwise dramatic or allegorical story. Sure, Warrior is about MMA, but it’s also about two distanced brothers who learn to live with themselves and each other. Miracle is chock-full of hockey fights, but also highlights the tense political atmosphere between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The Iron Claw, then, with all of its stylized and choreographed wrestling scenes, is less about the wrestling itself, and more about the tragic real-life stories of the Von Erich brothers. It is also, as Letterboxd user Haiduc said, “the feel bad movie of the year.”
Feel bad, despite its connotation, is not a negative in this context. A film like The Iron Claw has a lot riding on its shoulders; not only must it honor the truth of its characters’ lives, who are and were real people, it must also be appealing to audiences familiar and unfamiliar with the story. As someone unfamiliar with the Von Erichs but also as someone who loves sports films, this one hit all the right notes while still being uniquely devastating.
The film follows Kevin, Kerry, David, and Mike Von Erich, all sons of Doris and Fritz Von Erich, as they navigate the professional wrestling world in Texas, the family vying for the title of World Heavyweight Champion whilst also dealing with the weight of a perceived curse upon them. Kevin is the most prominent of the brothers, but each one has his own hopes, dreams and idiosyncrasies that are displayed in the film. Each brother, despite often sharing scenes and despite the focus being on Kevin, feels like a distinct person; this makes each of their untimely demise feel all the more devastating.
I’ll be honest: it took me about ten minutes to get hooked into this film. The opening black and white sequence, while interesting, felt slightly stilted in the style of its dialogue and structure, almost too directly expositional for my taste. It’s also worth noting that blatantly expositional dialogue occurs again later in the film towards the end, but disappears when the film is in its strongest rhythm in between. But once I was in this story, I was really in it. Even before the supposed curse on the family starts taking effect on screen, the implications of it and weight of it is felt on the characters and the narrative. They don’t just want to be the best, they need to be — at least according to Fritz. This prophecy is ironically and tragically self fulfilling, but seeing it on screen, it plays almost Shakespearian. You know things the characters don’t and you see what they can’t but there is nothing you can do to help them escape their narrative. Like the title characters in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, there is nothing the characters can do to change their fates, not in the context of this film, anyways. It’s prewritten, it’s reality; it was, is, and always will be.
Despite the tension and sense of unease that grow as the film progresses, the “feel bad” part of it hits in full force in its last half an hour as Kerry and Kevin are the last remaining brothers, then, only Kevin. There’s an almost magic-realism imaginary sequence towards the end that is perhaps overly sentimental, but effective nonetheless.
And given the nature of this story, the film seems deserving of this moment, intended to be the tearjerker moment. It’s hard to say how an individual audience member might react to each tragedy in this film (and there are many), but this sequence serves to let the audience and Kevin breathe, and finally react to the relentless difficulties the family endures.
As a film The Iron Claw cannot perfectly capture reality, but it does its absolute best to make its audience at least feel reality. Chris Von Erich is notably absent, and as difficult a decision it must have been to cut the presence of the fifth brother, who, like two of his siblings, took his own life, his omission makes the film seem more believable, and less perpetual in its sequence of tragedies. It’s a tough decision to make, considering fans of the Von Erichs likely knew of Chris’s life, but cutting him from the film doesn’t feel coldhearted.
Despite the nature of the story and despite Fritz’s overbearing presence over his sons and wife, the film doesn’t feel coldhearted. Rather, it’s a poignant story of brotherhood, hubris, and cycles of fear and abuse. The Iron Claw might be the feel bad movie to end out 2023, but it is one made with care, from its visual storytelling to its performances, and it is one that leaves you with a keen sense of the Von Erichs’ lives. It’s a sports film but also not, it’s utterly devastating, and it’s absolutely worth dragging your entire family to over the holiday season, even if they, like my family did, leave the theatre claiming it was “the saddest movie [they’ve] ever seen.”
Cover Photo courtesy of A24.