INSIDE THE IRON CLAW: DISECTING THE VON ERICHS

James Beard Wrestling Promoter &
Von Erich Family Friend

The true story of the inseparable Von Erich brothers, who make history in the intensely competitive world of professional wrestling in the early 1980s. Through tragedy and triumph, under the shadow of their domineering father and coach, the brothers seek larger-than-life immortality on the biggest stage in sports.

ean Durkin’s first two features, “Martha Marcy May Marlene” and “The Nest,” have a manner that I’d describe as apologetic realism: there’s something he’s bursting to say, but he forces it into the confines of tightly crafted dramas. Those films have a tamped-down melancholy that hint at how much he’s holding in check. He doesn’t lay his voice on the line, but, by forcing his characters into frameworks with a too-clear point, he never seems to explore their lives fully, either. His third feature, “The Iron Claw” (which opens December 22nd), is different. In this group bio-pic of the Von Erich family of professional wrestlers, Durkin’s brand of realism is even more rigorous, yet unapologetic. He still has plenty to say, but this time his characters do more than fit his ideas—they inspire his imagination, largely because they themselves are creators of fantasy.

As presented by Durkin, the patriarch, Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany), has a chip on his shoulder the size of a sequoia, and he matches it with colossal dreams of vengeful success that overwhelm everyone in his life. The story starts in the nineteen-sixties, when Fritz, a struggling wrestler, splurges on a Cadillac to foster an illusion of success, while imbuing his two young sons, Kevin and David, with a gospel of fanatical self-reliance that’s also an imperative to be the “toughest” and the “strongest.” The movie’s protagonist, and its occasional narrator, is the grownup Kevin (Zac Efron, imposingly muscled), the family’s oldest surviving son. Kevin’s older brother, Jack, Jr., died in an accident at the age of six. Jack’s death is one of the key reversals that shadows the family, leading to the pervasive, publicity-fuelled notion—one that the Von Erichs take grimly seriously—of a family curse. The heart of the drama begins in 1979, when Kevin is making a name for himself in the ring—namely, the Sportatorium, a small Dallas arena that Fritz owns and operates. “We loved wrestling,” Kevin reminisces in voice-over, and it shows, even as the rest of the movie depicts how that love was lost, along with many of the people he loved.

 

“The Iron Claw” is as exuberant as it is mournful, and the high spirits of performance and achievement are inseparable from the price that they exact. Kevin is disciplined, focussed, and grounded; he’s a vigorous and enthusiastic performer, leaping from the ropes, raging, slamming, punching, and putting on a show with the maneuver—the skull-squeezing Iron Claw—that made his father famous. But for Fritz it isn’t enough that Kevin is locally successful; Fritz, who believes that he was wrongly denied the sport’s heavyweight championship, lives for the day that one of his four sons—and, indeed, preferably all of them, in succession—will win that belt. (In real life, there were five at the time; Durkin cuts one, Chris, the youngest, out of the story.) But what does it mean for a pro wrestler to win? The movie makes the matter apparent, by way of a bit of dialogue that’s dropped into the movie sweetly and aptly—in the sequence in which Kevin connects with Pam (Lily James), a determined and self-aware young autograph seeker with an ulterior motive. The scene of their meeting is one of the most charmingly written and performed romantic encounters of the year in movies (up there with the elevator encounter in “Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game,” which started the year in romance), and the date that follows is similarly witty, wry, and tender.