It's never easy to admit this, but I'm a professional wrestling fan. Always have been.

One small reason for the stigma attached to wrestling is its silly treatment by Hollywood. Dreadful films like "No Holds Barred" and "Ready to Rumble" have depicted professional wrestling as a real sport. This approach not only limits the scope of the movie to that of its carnivalesque subject matter, it insults the intelligence of an audience that knows full well wrestling is a scripted and collaborative form of entertainment.

The early buzz about Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" gives me hope that my hobby may finally see the classic it deserves. The film has already collected the Golden Lion Prize at the Venice Film Festival and ignited a bidding war between distributors following a raved-about screening at the Toronto Film Festival.

I can't speak with certainty for the movie's story, but I understand that it takes audiences behind the curtain, where wrestlers plot their moves and discuss things like "getting heat" - building audience interest - and "going home" - arriving at the scripted finish of the match. (I was actually in attendance at a New York City wrestling show where Aronofsky and then-lead Nicolas Cage were doing research with Ring of Honor wrestling).

As the titled protagonist, Mickey Rourke - Randy “The Ram” - faces the limits of his aging body as he seeks the embrace of his audience. The demands of the wrestling business also strains his relationship with his family.

Randy's odyssey gives Aronofsky the opportunity to explore issues that have adopted great urgency since Chris Benoit alarmed the nation by murdering his family and then himself last year. In "The Wrestler," we see the real pain these performers endure, the drugs they use to alleviate it and the high of a hot crowd that drives them to endure it.

I'm not expecting "The Wrestler" to win professional wrestling respect; on the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised to see it lose some when the desperation of its performers is laid bare by Aronofsky and Rourke. Regardless, I don't expect many viewers to continue thinking that professional wrestling is fake.

Read all about the latest happenings in the world of film at David Wilcox's movie blog, “The Citizen's Cinema,” at www.auburnpub.com.