The Wrestler, which was perhaps one of the best films of last year, arrived yesterday on DVD and I was quite excited to get my hands on it. Watching the film again, I wonder how it didn’t get more award nominations. In case you’ve been living in outer space, The Wrestler revolves around “The Ram” (played, in what should have been an Oscar Winning performance, by Mickey Rourke), an aging wrestling star whose glory days are behind him. He’s estranged from his daughter (played beautifully by Evan Rachel Wood) and is alone in the world until he meets a stripper with a heart of gold (played brilliantly by the ever better looking Marisa Tomei).

Since I’ll assume that you guys haven’t been living under a rock, I’ll assume that you have seen the film and we all know that it is top notch, so we can move onto the specific features of the disc. I will be very honest and upfront about this: This disc is extremely light on special features. I’m grateful for these features and found them extremely excellent, but I would skip the DVD version of this film and go straight for the Blu-ray.

The special features consisted of a behind-the-scene’s featurette and a Bruce Springsteen music video.

Both were good. I didn’t realize how non-traditional the filming of The Wrestler was, though I shouldn’t have expected anything less from a visionary like Darren Aronofsky. The interviews and behind the scenes footage were enlightening and raised questions about the nature of the filmmaking that sometimes it didn’t quite answer. In any case, it’s always fascinating to get a glimpse of the way Aronofsky runs a set, no matter how unorthodox. I was also fascinated to learn that the venues and wrestling matches were, for the most part, real due to the inadequate budget of the film.

There’s lots of nuggets of information to be gleaned from this feature and I wish there were more of it. I was a little disappointed by the lack of commentary on this disc as well since that’s a pretty standard feature, but if there was a lesson to be learned with The Fountain, perhaps we’ll see a downloadable version of one on Aronofsky’s website.

My verdict on this one? It’s obvious you have to own this movie. As Aronofsky fans and a lovers of excellent films, we have to own this film, but my advice is to skip the DVD and get the Blu-ray.

I expect to see more of this by film studios as well. Stripping down the DVD version and loading up the Blu-ray. It makes sense if they want to dictate purchasing behavior.