There is arguably no more misunderstood theme in film than the cost of greatness, and if the Von Erics were anything, they were great. Collectively, they touched the highest echelons of their profession, and the wrestling world has rarely seen anything like them since. Yet, their story is marred by tragedies so severe that you assume they must be fictitious. They aren’t.
Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw is the first attempt to commit the Von Erichs to celluloid, and understandably so. A wrestling movie that is more interested in embodying melancholia than sporting ecstasy is a hard sell. Fortunately, A24 were willing to take the risk. The film plays out from the perspective of Kevin Von Erich (a career-defining turn by Zac Efron) who watches the rise and fall of his brothers Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), David (Harris Dickinson), and Mike (Stanley Simons). What begins as a typical sports movie – the overbearing father/coach, the frat parties, and the camaraderie – soon evolves into something much more instinctive. Like other films before it, it asks what happens when someone is pushed beyond their limits. However, where films like Whiplash propose that there is a method to the madness, The Iron Claw has a different understanding. The brothers never make it. There is no end goal. They will never be enough. Instead, they will keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing until one day their legs will cave, and they won’t be able push anymore.
In his attempt to capture this thesis, Durkin employs restraint (although not necessarily subtlety). You want a moment to sink into the feeling, into the tragedy, but, just like Kevin, you are denied the luxury. The Iron Claw understands that grief never comes at a good time, and often you have to move forward just the same as you always have; so, you do, you keep going. Until one day, you’re compelled to stop, because it eventually it hits you, and in that moment you change fundamentally and forever. That arc requires a distinctly masculine suppression, one which Efron delivers effortlessly. He is, however, the film’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness. For, in focusing on his experience, the other brothers get lost. Dickinson, White, and Simons are supreme talents, and just once I wish the film could have sat with them, given them the space it allows Efron. But it doesn’t, and that is a choice of Durkin’s that I respect, but do not necessarily agree with.
Famously, the wrestling matches were filmed in their entirety, rather than shot-by-shot. Efron, Dickinson, and White all did their own stunts which lends a weight to every punch, kick, and jump. These sequences capture the brutality of the sport, in addition to the sheer scale of the Von Erich charisma. Put simply, some things can’t be faked, and the commitment from the actors and director to doing everything on camera is essential – how could anyone believe they fall if they can’t believe the rise?
The Iron Claw is a movie about how we process grief, about fathers and sons, and most-of-all, it is a movie about brothers. It just so happens to be disguised as a wrestling movie.
Illustration by Lucy Keegan