Bennett Miller’s Oscar-nominated drama of the encounter between working-class sweat and perfumed privilege is set in the intensely intimate sport of freestyle wrestling, the one in which a body lock can be a step towards defeat or even death.
The 129-minute movie draws from real-life events that transpired in the US in the 1980s and ’90s and involved professional wrestlers, brothers Dave and Mark Schultz, and their benefactor, John E Du Pont (Steve Carell), who later turned against them. Olympic winner Mark (Channing Tatum), depicted here as an emotionally stunted child-man, is a prized addition to the multi-millionaire’s Foxcatcher Farms wrestling academy on his estate. The academy is revealingly titled: it is both a hunting ground for talent that will win gold for America at the Seoul Olympic games as well as a cushy trap that Mark walks right into.
More hunting metaphors abound in the appearance of Carell’s Du Pont, who has a hawk nose and the eyes of a wild creature that has just spotted breakfast. Mark’s increasing closeness to Du Pont occasionally allows the wrestler to replace his permanent scowl with a smile or two, but it estranges him from his elder brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo).
Tackles and traps
Written by Dan Futterman and E Max Frye, Foxcatcher is an intermittently rivetting, self-conscious and deadly serious exploration of the peculiar nature of the relationship between Du Pont and his possession. The movie is more in tune with Miller’s 2011 baseball-set drama Moneyball than his superb 2005 biopic Capote. There are clear homo-erotic overtones to Du Pont’s encounters with Mark – in some ways, Foxcatcher plays out as a one-way Brokeback Mountain, or even as a triangle between the two Schultzes and Du Pont, with Mark as the trophy yanked this way and that.
If Du Pont is aroused by the larger sport of wrestling itself, there’s no way to tell from Carell’s face. Covered with facial make-up and saddled with a false nose to create a greater resemblance with the real person, Carell’s Du Pont is meant to be an enigma, but if there was ever a character in the movie that needed explaining, it’s his.
Carell, who usually plays comic roles, always holds his head slightly aloft, as if to emphasise his superior position in the equation. Foxcatcher has many such patches of literal-mindedness. There’s a redundant scene in which Du Pont’s mother (Vanessa Redgrave) spells out why she despises her son’s interest in wrestling. A better sequence is when Du Pont shows off his command over his team and fakes a few wrestling moves when his mother visits the academy – a coming-out moment, as it were, and one that causes his mother to turn her face in revulsion. The scene is the only one in which Du Pont’s unrelenting malevolence cracks to let a bit of pathos seep through.
Miller is so petrified of letting complex emotions clutter the movie that he creates his own trap around Du Pont and Mark. Mark has a few moments, beautifully performed by Tatum, when the contradictions of his position overwhelm him, but Miller rarely lets him or Du Pont become full persons. Du Pont is near-vampiric, while Mark is all meat and always in need a cure.
Only Dave, who has a wife and kids and the air of a charismatic professor, appears to be made of flesh and blood. No wonder he pays the biggest price of the three.
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The 129-minute movie draws from real-life events that transpired in the US in the 1980s and ’90s and involved professional wrestlers, brothers Dave and Mark Schultz, and their benefactor, John E Du Pont (Steve Carell), who later turned against them. Olympic winner Mark (Channing Tatum), depicted here as an emotionally stunted child-man, is a prized addition to the multi-millionaire’s Foxcatcher Farms wrestling academy on his estate. The academy is revealingly titled: it is both a hunting ground for talent that will win gold for America at the Seoul Olympic games as well as a cushy trap that Mark walks right into.
More hunting metaphors abound in the appearance of Carell’s Du Pont, who has a hawk nose and the eyes of a wild creature that has just spotted breakfast. Mark’s increasing closeness to Du Pont occasionally allows the wrestler to replace his permanent scowl with a smile or two, but it estranges him from his elder brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo).
Tackles and traps
Written by Dan Futterman and E Max Frye, Foxcatcher is an intermittently rivetting, self-conscious and deadly serious exploration of the peculiar nature of the relationship between Du Pont and his possession. The movie is more in tune with Miller’s 2011 baseball-set drama Moneyball than his superb 2005 biopic Capote. There are clear homo-erotic overtones to Du Pont’s encounters with Mark – in some ways, Foxcatcher plays out as a one-way Brokeback Mountain, or even as a triangle between the two Schultzes and Du Pont, with Mark as the trophy yanked this way and that.
If Du Pont is aroused by the larger sport of wrestling itself, there’s no way to tell from Carell’s face. Covered with facial make-up and saddled with a false nose to create a greater resemblance with the real person, Carell’s Du Pont is meant to be an enigma, but if there was ever a character in the movie that needed explaining, it’s his.
Carell, who usually plays comic roles, always holds his head slightly aloft, as if to emphasise his superior position in the equation. Foxcatcher has many such patches of literal-mindedness. There’s a redundant scene in which Du Pont’s mother (Vanessa Redgrave) spells out why she despises her son’s interest in wrestling. A better sequence is when Du Pont shows off his command over his team and fakes a few wrestling moves when his mother visits the academy – a coming-out moment, as it were, and one that causes his mother to turn her face in revulsion. The scene is the only one in which Du Pont’s unrelenting malevolence cracks to let a bit of pathos seep through.
Miller is so petrified of letting complex emotions clutter the movie that he creates his own trap around Du Pont and Mark. Mark has a few moments, beautifully performed by Tatum, when the contradictions of his position overwhelm him, but Miller rarely lets him or Du Pont become full persons. Du Pont is near-vampiric, while Mark is all meat and always in need a cure.
Only Dave, who has a wife and kids and the air of a charismatic professor, appears to be made of flesh and blood. No wonder he pays the biggest price of the three.
