‘The Iron Claw’ — Death Happens When You Aren't Watching

Sean Durkin’s third feature carves out meaning and hope from heart-shattering tragedies

About an hour in, there’s a superimposition in Sean Durkin’s unconventional A24 sports biopic, The Iron Claw, which singularly encapsulates the movie’s essence in one poignant frame. It’s the first time the writer-director truly drives home the emotional notion that the Von Erich brothers only feel whole in each other’s company, side by side, whether sharing triumph and joy or failure and grief. Every time they’re separated, their incompleteness becomes palpable, lacking a vital part that makes them who they are. Individually, they’re shadows of themselves — together, they’re unstoppable athletes with a heart that keeps giving.

This one frame (and what it achingly represents) is the core of what propels an otherwise structurally, and at times tonally, uneven film to be deeply intimate. Durkin treats the brothers — Kevin (Zac Efron), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), David (Harris Dickinson), and eventually Mike (Stanley Simons) — as one character with four slightly different counterparts. Their affectionate brotherly love is the true protagonist here, embodying a familial bond that’s so strong and unified we’re inclined to believe it’s unbreakable. But it isn’t. Not when the very person, Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany), who made them, is in control of it.

The family's patriarch, a strict and insatiable father, can’t stop chasing his lost dream through his boys, which eventually drives them to a breaking point. They’re no longer able to endure the physical and emotional weight he puts them under as an overwhelming burden. That’s “The Curse” Kevin (and later his younger siblings) keeps referring to — he just can’t see or admit it until the irreversible damage is done. Slowly, one by one, the Von Erich children succumb to the authoritarian pressure that creates a severe mental and emotional wound their dad keeps infecting with his own inadequacy and toxic masculinity without ever letting it heal.

Though The Iron Claw has been out since December — and its tragic story hardly comes as a surprise to any film and wrestling fan — this is where I have to urge you to watch the movie before reading any further or familiarize yourself with the family’s history. In other words: spoilers ahead.

Perhaps the most unconventional and odd artistic choice by Durkin (at least for a sports biopic) is how he handles death. Meaning: every death in the film happens off-screen. When the news comes that David died in Japan due to a ruptured intestine, the closest we get to his passing is through the baffling and devastating expression we see on Kevin's and his father's faces. At first, I found this a strangely impersonal move (not letting us witness the tragedy in its entirety), but the more I thought about it as the film progressed, the more I realized it was a very conscious one.

We don’t see David (or Kerry and Mike) die because their family doesn’t see it either. They all pass alone, unhappy and resigned, far from their brothers’ support and unconditional love. They can’t hold each other’s hands, they can’t hug it out, and they can’t try convincing the other that life’s still worth living despite all adversity. Sadly, we usually don’t get that chance. Yet we somehow have to find a way to make sense of the inexplicable — even if it seems virtually impossible — and find solace within ourselves to carry on.

Durkin knew that sudden and unexpected deaths, especially suicides, usually occur out of the blue, with no warning. There are no goodbyes, just a crippling amount of guilt, confusing incomprehension, and all-consuming grief. Fritz wants none of that, even after his fourth son kills himself, and he rejects it the same way he rejects taking responsibility. Instead, he immediately jumps to the next son alive, who can still achieve his dream. His wife, Doris (Maura Tierney), is so crushed by these losses that she disappears within her faith. That leaves Kevin, the only Von Erich who allows himself to see and not deny what wrestling and chasing titles did to his family, his beloved brothers.

Durkin omitted actual deaths, changed details that are historically inaccurate (Kerry actually had a family), and even sacrificed a brother (Chris Von Erich, who also died by suicide, didn’t make it into the film) because his aim wasn’t to make a painstaking character study (like Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler) or an exact biopic that carefully documented the smallest of details. He just wanted to honor and accentuate a devotion and endearment going beyond physical accomplishments.

Besides its inspiration and roots in wrestling, The Iron Claw, first and foremost, portrays how we experience and process personal tragedies. Yes, it’s about loss, pain, and grief, but it’s also about those who survived and kept fighting with an undying love for their loved ones, which persevered even when they didn’t believe it was possible. That warm, reassuring, and indestructible emotion that sometimes crucifies our souls with its piercing magnitude but ultimately strengthens us to bear life no matter how hard and painful it gets.

The Iron Claw might not make its way into the pantheon of the greatest sports biopics, but with an ending that's so cathartically heart-breaking yet optimistic, it carves out hope and meaning from a family’s history bludgeoned by tragedy and misfortune. And as you watch Zac Efron cry the most impressive tears of his career in that beautiful and heart-wrenching ending, you’ll find yourself shuffling through the gravest and the happiest memories of your own life. And sometimes, that’s the best gift a film can give you.

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Earlier this week, I wrote an opinion piece for Paste about how True Detective: Night Country failed to capture the essence of what made Nic Pizzolatto’s vision so magnetically captivating 10 years ago.

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