Spoiler Alert: This text comprises spoilers for The Smashing Machine.
“We who wince at this gritty depiction really feel a wound at our aspect as nicely.”
Throughout orientation on the Vanderbilt Divinity College, I heard a lecture on hermeneutics and the varied interpretational frameworks every particular person brings to the Bible. We began not with the textual content at hand however a well-known oil portray impressed by it—Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of St. Thomas. My classmates observed many aspects of the masterpiece, together with the intimacy of the portray, the realism of Thomas’s wrinkled face, the fleshiness of Christ’s wounded aspect, and the heat of the scene’s shade palette. Two feedback linger with me. First, Thomas has dust beneath his fingernails, inflicting any fashionable viewer to squirm from the danger of an infection. Second, Christ guides Thomas into his aspect, snuffing out his disciple’s doubt with a loving hand.
Historian Edwin David Aponte writes concerning Thomas’s shock, “Maybe, the shock has to do along with his unbelief. It may be shock on the realization that he, too, can also be pierced. Certainly, St. Thomas seems to clutch his aspect as if he turns into conscious of a wound at his aspect as nicely. And we who wince at this gritty depiction really feel a wound at our aspect as nicely.”
Caravaggio’s piece does invite wincing, and the masterpiece left its mark on me as I understood my very own brokenness and Christ’s intimate, redemptive embrace. However I used to be shocked to seek out myself returning to the piece when beholding a really completely different visible spectacle.
Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine (2025) portrays the profession of MMA legend Mark Kerr, performed by wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Set within the late Nineties, the biographical sports activities drama follows Kerr’s dominance within the early days of UFC and his leap to Japan’s PRIDE Preventing Championships. Because the movie progresses, Safdie particulars Kerr’s battle with habit and relational turmoil with girlfriend Daybreak Staples (Emily Blunt), in addition to his friendship with fellow fighter Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader).
“It’s important to ask your self, would you stick your finger in your opponent’s minimize, unfold it out a little bit bit extra simply to win and make him really feel ache? Would you?”
Safdie deftly chronicles the psychological and bodily anguish brought on by Kerr’s pursuit of greatness, however not within the method of different sports activities biopics. Brian Tallerico calls Safdie’s method an “anti-biopic” that avoids clichés and often retains viewers at arm’s size. Combat scenes are private however hardly ever within the ring; the viewer appears like a front-row fan, however nothing extra. There is just one prolonged coaching montage, nevertheless it ends with Kerr’s coach collapsing from a torn tendon. Even the Muzak-like rating, infused with jazz and pop, transports the viewer out of the pivotal scenes for the style. The extra partaking elements of the movie could be the additional footage minimize from movies like Creed—small discuss in physician ready rooms and quiet mornings in Kerr’s house kitchen.
The movie opens with Kerr’s debut match in Brazil. That includes a voiceover with an interview from Kerr, the scene reveals Johnson’s hulking physique brutally pummeling a bloodied opponent into the mat. Every thud of his opponent’s head is extra vicious than the final. Kerr relates his preventing philosophy to the interviewer.
The second that bell rings you may have a look at individuals and you may simply inform, they’re scared to loss of life. You’ll be able to see it of their eyes and scent it of their sweat.
It’s easy, am I going to harm him earlier than he hurts me?
To bodily impose my will on you…is a fairly highly effective factor.
What caught with me most was Kerr’s closing assertion: “It’s important to ask your self, would you stick your finger in your opponent’s minimize, unfold it out a little bit bit extra simply to win and make him really feel ache? Would you? After all you’d! You realize why? As a result of profitable is the perfect feeling there may be.”
For a movie that retains its viewers at a distance, that is what viewers must find out about Kerr’s mindset throughout his meteoric rise. All that issues is sustaining a grasp on dominating the ring, match after match: “By the top, you’re feeling like a god.”’
Kerr, admittedly, is a bit ironic. He’s delicate spoken and slightly personable, a delicate big. However when he’s within the ring, he’s the titular smashing machine. Johnson delivers a haunting efficiency of a person enmeshed in a sport the place males forge their our bodies into weapons. There’s a jarring scene after a Japanese match the place Kerr converses along with his opponent, and so they laughingly evaluate the cuts and bruises they inflicted upon each other.
But, Kerr can’t escape the fragility of being human. He spirals into drug abuse to ease the bodily toil of the game, engendering an eventual overdose that jeopardizes his profession. One picture reveals Kerr, comically giant in a small hospital mattress, sobbing in his robe—an image of bodily power introduced down by religious weak spot.
He’s additionally a perfectionist. Early within the movie, Kerr chastises Daybreak over utilizing the unsuitable milk in his smoothie, a cringeworthy second that recurs in lots of kinds all through the movie. However his greatest habit is profitable. After an unlawful knee to the pinnacle causes him to lose a match in Japan, Kerr pleads for a no contest ruling, and regardless of receiving his request, is haunted by the considered his undefeated report faltering.
His obsession with profitable oozes into his relationship with Daybreak. Kerr’s biting remarks towards her veer into in-home violence, together with a scene the place he destroys a door. Though Kerr’s restoration from drug abuse brings the 2 nearer collectively, he rapidly absorbs himself again into his aggressive ethos. This closing spiral pushes Daybreak to aim suicide, forcing Kerr to interrupt down a door—once more—to restrain her. I discovered this facet of the movie a bit problematic; Blunt’s impeccable appearing means can’t appear to lift Daybreak from a slightly static characterization. Nonetheless, it shows the victimhood brought on by a mindset fixated on self-praise and conquest. A recurring MMA mantra within the movie says all of it: “Ache is momentary, delight is perpetually.”
What lingers is the movie’s anticlimax: a fighter who chooses to be healed slightly than to be victorious.
Having watched Safdie’s filmography, like Good Time and Uncut Gems (each co-directed along with his brother Josh), I anticipated The Smashing Machine to additional spiral into chaos. Surprisingly, he affords some slightly lovely moments, and he ends the movie on an uplifting, if poignant, observe. Kerr, for all his prowess within the ring, will be sort and tender. Early within the movie, he provides a baby a signature in a health care provider’s ready room. He refers to his abdomen as “my tummy” greater than as soon as. He and Daybreak share a couple of tender scenes at a demolition derby and an amusement park (Kerr’s simply upset abdomen prevents him from driving a curler coaster with Daybreak).
The movie’s most touching facet is Kerr’s relationship with Mark Coleman, a pal, former coach, and, ultimately, a fellow competitor. When Kerr overdoses, Coleman instantly flies out to see his pal and encourage him, and Coleman serves as a constant shoulder for Kerr to lean on. Unsurprisingly, the movie builds to the place the 2 pals may battle collectively on the 2000 PRIDE Grand Prix, maybe placing their friendship on the road.
Besides that it doesn’t occur! As an “anti-biopic,” The Smashing Machine maintains an anticlimax. Earlier than he can battle Coleman, Kerr, affected by his damaged relationship with Daybreak, loses within the match. Because the viewer watches Coleman win the prize, Mark resigns himself to receiving stitches. The penultimate scene of the story juxtaposes Coleman—alone along with his championship belt after a lot public celebration—with Kerr, additionally alone however laughing and smiling within the bathe.
As the whole inverse of Kerr’s preliminary mindset, perception arises from Christ asking us, in our personal woundedness, to unfold our palms into his resurrected wounds.
One may be disillusioned by this muted final result for a movie about championships. Nonetheless, I respect this conclusion by Safdie greater than every other facet of the movie. Though not overtly non secular, The Smashing Machine factors towards Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, the place perception is born by way of touching the injuries of Christ slightly than denying them. “How so?” you may ask. What lingers is the movie’s anticlimax: a fighter who chooses to be healed slightly than to be victorious. As a substitute of being the fighter who will thrust his fingers into his opponent’s aspect for a fleeting hit of glory, Kerr acknowledges what’s good for him, actually, and decides to faucet out.
A leitmotif inside the movie is a kintsugi bowl. Kintsugi is the Japanese artwork of repairing damaged pottery by mending the cracks with lacquer dusted with powdered gold. The result’s a gorgeous, distinctive, and even stronger piece than earlier than it was damaged. Kerr buys a kintsugi bowl in Japan for Daybreak, which is later damaged by her and mended as soon as once more.
To me, the best notion kintsugi conveys is that the scars of the pottery stay, however they’re reworked into one thing superb. This captures a paradoxical fact on the coronary heart of Christian religion: Our resurrection in Christ doesn’t erase our scars however transforms them. Take into account Nancy Eisland in The Disabled God:
Within the resurrected Jesus Christ, [the disciples] noticed not the struggling servant for whom the final and most necessary phrase was tragedy and sin, however the disabled God who embodied each impaired palms and toes and pierced aspect and the imago Dei [or image of God]. Paradoxically, within the very act generally understood because the transcendence of bodily life, God is revealed as tangible, bearing the illustration of the physique reshaped by injustice and sin into the fullness of the Godhead.
On the finish of the movie, a real-life Mark Kerr pushes a purchasing cart in a grocery retailer, brimming with pleasure in his digital anonymity. Safdie paints an image right here of a person who chooses therapeutic over victory, and asks us to recollect his title.
Then he mentioned to Thomas, ‘Put your finger right here and see my palms. Attain out your hand and put it in my aspect. Don’t doubt however imagine.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ (John 20:27-28 NRSV).
Kerr’s option to acknowledge his scars, I argue, invitations Christians to hunt the final word doctor. As the whole inverse of Kerr’s preliminary mindset, perception arises from Christ asking us, in our personal woundedness, to unfold our palms into his resurrected wounds. As Thomas does, allow us to proclaim Christ’s title after we accomplish that.
