Review #839: 'Foxcatcher' (2014)

When it comes to depicting a real figure caught up in real events, the one aspect that movie's struggle with is really getting to the heart of it's character. Commonly, these characters are larger than life, and it takes a truly talented actor to bring them to life and an intelligent script to dig beneath their skin. Director Bennett Miller seem to have the magic touch. His three features have all been based on true-life stories. Philip Seymour Hoffman brought Truman Capote to life in Capote (2005), to the point where you believed the strange voice coming out of him wasn't a mere impersonation, but an embodiment. His second feature, Moneyball (2011) was a solid depiction of underdog coach Billy Bean (Brad Pitt), who changed baseball forever with his use of statistical analysis.

He's done it again with Foxcatcher, the shocking true tale of one man's madness amidst the quest for Olympic gold. Like with Moneyball, we are taken behind the scenes (or beyond the mat) of the sporting world, and the screen is flooded with the same damp, autumn colours as it was in Capote. It is melancholic but unsettling, as if slowly pumping up a balloon and waiting for it to burst. We first meet Olympic gold medallist Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), scraping twenty bucks together by appearing in his brother's absence at a school to teach kids the values required to achieve a gold medal. He goes home and eats microwave noodles, and then it's back to the practice mat in preparation for the next tournament.

His luck seems on the rise when he is contacted by the mysterious John du Pont (Steve Carell), the head of a vastly wealthy dynasty who lives at his huge, beautiful Foxcatcher Farm. Curious, Mark goes to meet him and learns of du Pont's plans to make his farm the breeding ground of American wrestling. He instantly signs up, and Mark is given his own cabin and top-notch training facility. He is also given lots of cocaine, and soon submits to du Pont, at one point seen crouching in front of du Pont on his porch, like a well-trained guard dog. But du Pont is not satisfied with Mark alone - he wants his brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo), also an gold medallist - at Foxcatcher too. Only Dave has settled with his wife (Sienna Miller) and children in the suburbs and, as Mark points out, can't be bought. Du Pont cannot process this.

If you don't know the bizarre news story that came out of this arrangement, then it's best not to know. The film's foreboding is creeping. The introduction of John du Pont doesn't portray him as the strange, uncharismatic, and increasingly deranged man that he was; instead we see him at a distance, muttering pleasantries and looking down that huge nose of his. He doesn't convince as a wrestling coach, but Mark laps up the attention and luxury like any young man in his position would. When Dave eventually arrives, he sees du Pont for what he is - a man-child who inherited wealth, buying tanks to add to his military paraphernalia and living in fear of his reclusive mother (played by Vanessa Redgrave), wishing himself a leader of men without possessing any of the necessary skills required to be so. Only at this point, Mark has seen it too, but he also resents the success of his brother.

Miller and screenwriters E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman take all of this and makes it an analogy of modern America, where wealth inherited rather than earned still looms large over a country sworn to pursuing the dream and democracy. The performances are terrific. Carell and Ruffalo earned the Oscar nominations, but Tatum more than holds his own. In a scene just after a lost bout, Mark paces his room like a cage animal, suddenly bursting with rage and destroying a mirror with his head. Considering this was improvised on the spot by a dedicated Tatum, it really takes the breath away. Like the recent work of David Fincher, I believe that in the years to come, Foxcatcher will be studied as a window into our times and will be viewed as one of the finest American films of it's era.


Directed by: Bennett Miller
Starring: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie