(USA, 135 min.)
Dir. Bennett Miller, Writ. E. Max Frye, Dan Futterman
Starring: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna
Miller, Vanessa Redgrave
“Coach is a father; coach is a mentor; coach has great power
over an athlete’s life,” says John Du Pont (Steve Carell) as he extols his own
greatness to the camera whilst recording a documentary about the successes of
his self-financed wrestling team. John is coach of the team in name only,
acting as the resident Uncle Moneybags funding a team of young wrestlers
destined for Olympic gold. The whole ruse of his team, Team Foxcatcher, exists
to elevate Olympic gold medal winner Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) and, in
turn, John himself. John certainly has the power over his athlete’s life that
he professes, and the bizarre relationship of John and Mark takes the true tale
of Foxcatcher into dark corners that
few films about the coach/athlete relationship tend to go.
It would be incorrect to dub Foxcatcher a “sports movie” even though director Bennett Miller
offers it as his follow-up to the 2011 hit Moneyball.
(That one isn’t really a sports movie either, although less obviously so.) Foxcatcher, rather, is an incisive
portrait of America’s upper crust, and an unrelentingly cold dissection of privilege
and power. The film wholly feels like an all-American take on European art
cinema with its militaristic physicality playing out in methodically composed
and detached takes that contrast the dreams of the athlete from that of his
mentor. Each shot of Foxcatcher is
clinically choreographed and marshalled to the point of sterility, but it’s
hardly a film that invites or even aspires to the release of emotion.
Miller’s detached camera trains its eye on the brooding and
sulky Mark as he struggles to evade the shadow of his coach and elder brother
David (a compelling Mark Ruffalo), who is an Olympic gold medalist himself.
John seduces Mark to join Team Foxcatcher with a handsome paycheck and
promises of autonomy, while Mark unknowingly seduces John in turn with his robust
physique and feeble malleability. Foxcatcher
immediately establishes John and Mark’s relationship as an unconventional and
unusual one, for Mark takes the gig without any concern for John own interest
in funding the team. John, a wealthy businessman of the ‘old money’ variety
with few athletic inclinations, simply submits that Team Foxcatcher is his
opportunity to inspire hope for America and Mark gobbles up the ideology as a
pet dog does a rash of bacon.
Foxcatcher plays
on divides of class, wealth, and privilege in America with the disparate
performances of Carell and Tatum, which become increasingly polarized as the
film progresses and the tension between John and Mark magnifies. Carell,
sporting a fake nose on loan from Nicole Kidman in The Hours, gives a quietly terrifying performance as the
mild-mannered egomaniac. Carell frequently does little in the scene—John is
nearly catatonic with propriety and good manners—and he mostly lets his prosthesis
do the talking as John observes Mark’s muscly body before chiming “good” and
clapping his hands twice. The performance isn’t quite as revelatory as, say,
Robin Williams’ dark turns in Insomnia
and One Hour Photo, but there’s a
simmering menace to Carell’s overly mannered performance that shows how John is
a most awkward and dangerous man. John’s inner turmoil arises best in the few
moments in which Foxcatcher
capitalizes on Carell’s comedic timing and reveals John’s sense of entitlement,
compounded with his sullenness and mental illness, which arises best in one
scene in which John, high on cocaine whilst flying a helicopter, laughs like a
maniac and leads Mark on a string of complicated wordplay. As Carell laughs
deviously amidst the dark unsettling tone of Miller’s frame, Foxcatcher shows John’s appropriation of
Mark as a kind of sport that provides a perverse pleasure only few can afford.
Tatum, on the other hand, is pure brooding physicality as Mark. Slackening his jaw and loosening his shoulders, Tatum conveys his
character’s intellectual and personal insecurities in the midst of men like
John or David who carry themselves confidently. Mark practically drags his
knuckles on the floor like a Neanderthal as Tatum makes his body so prominent
in the film, and Foxcatcher accessibly
shows how an athlete like Mark might be prime for the picking by a man like
John.
Mark and John’s relationship quickly flies out of control,
moving from that of athlete and coach to that of a pool boy and his affluent
sugar daddy. Miller frequently accentuates the obvious homoeroticism of
wrestling as John observes Mark writhing around in his singlet, and one
practicing match between John and Mark fleetingly evokes an image of sodomy,
and Foxcatcher toys with the
strangeness of John’s hold over Mark as Mark’s obsession with outshining
David explodes under John’s spell.
The film simmers with tension as egos flame and obsessions
rise, yet Miller frequently restrains the action and tone to be as docile as
life on the Du Pont’s grand estate. The detachedness of Miller’s methodical
direction makes Foxcatcher palpably
allegorical as John’s speeches and frequent boastings about America set the
estate as a petri dish for the 1% as he, like his cold mother (Vanessa Redgrave),
defines the minds of young men with antiquated visions and values, and, worse,
an unwavering sense of entitlement to the lives of others. The film even
manages to find a shred of sympathy for John in one awkward moment in which his
mother comes to observe the training of Team Foxcatcher and John pathetically
borrows the coaching duties from David and leads his athletes on an aimless
exercise, all the while shooting glances to see if mommy is watching. It’s
perhaps the only blip of emotion in the film—and the moment one pities John is
certainly as fleeting as Mrs. Du Pont’s interest in the low sport of boxing—and
Carell melts away the John’s evil air and shows the monster to be not the man,
but the legacy that breeds men like him.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Foxcatcher screens in Ottawa at the ByTowne
until Jan. 1 and from Feb. 21-23.
