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| Steve Carell and Channing Tatum work well off one-another in Foxcatcher (Sony Pictures Classics) |
*This is intended for those that have already seen Foxcatcher.
Foxcatcher is an atmospheric and chilling
folk tale that will leave your stomach in knots. John du Pont – a du Pont heir
and published ornithologist – was convicted of murdering wrestler Dave Schultz
in 1997. Nobody – not today, not then – knew exactly why du Pont killed David
Schultz, though some believe it was his paranoid schizophrenia that led him to
commit the crime. It’s an odd case and Foxcatcher
is an odd movie – it’s a mystery movie with no answers, a sports movie with
no winners. For Miller, it’s a leap from his other true crime drama Capote: while Hoffman gave a transcendent
performance, the narrative in this movie is tighter and more artistically
cohesive. Where Capote’s writing and
directing limited itself to the constraints of truth, Bennett Miller fulfills Truman Capote’s vision for
what good art should be in his approach to Foxcatcher:
“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not
what it's about, but the inner music that words make.”
And Bennett Miller
makes the music of this story shine through and allows us to explore this story
in a unique and refreshing way.
And its
central motif – wrestling – is at play throughout. Somehow, Miller is able to
show us how all these characters - John du Pont (Steve Carell), Mark Shultz
(Channing Tatum), and David Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) – wrestle with their own inner-demons
as well as those they face in the ring. We open on Mark training, and we end on
him fighting a match at the Olympics. Foxcatcher
about who we fight and what we fight for.
Olympic
freestyle wrestling requires discipline, precision, dexterity and focus – there
aren’t coordinated maneuvers here. Anything could go wrong at any second – if
you fumble, your opponent pins you down instantaneously. But it’s not all about
technique – it’s about camaraderie and collaboration, about coach and student.
This is why the script (E Max Frye, Dan Futterman) works so well. It paints
this chilling picture about what is missing from John du Pont’s life –
humanity, friendship, love – and uses that as a focal point for examining the
culture of sports. In a way, this is about a coach/player relationship gone
wrong and the emotional damage of these harmful hierarchies. Mark Schultz has
the talent; du Pont has the cash. Du Pont and Schultz work well together until
it becomes about who owns who, who is worth more, who is expendable. Foxcatcher delves into the damaged mind
of sports culture like no other film I’ve seen in recent memory. Unlike Whiplash, Foxcatcher is about wealth and ownership, not perfection and
competition (though it echoes the film in several key instances).
Money
can’t buy everything. It can buy you a mansion at Valley Forge or a machine gun
or an Olympic wrestling team or even America. But it cannot buy you a brother. John
du Pont learned that his mother paid his only childhood friend off – du Pont
uses wrestling to buy friendship as well as to lift his status in high society.
Du Pont, however, does not have any significant relationships with anybody
compared to those the Schultz’s have with each other. When Mark – emotionally-abused
by du Pont – decides to escape the claws of the emotionally vacant billionaire,
Dave stands up to du Pont and demands Mark receive a salary even if he isn’t
going to be on the Foxcatcher Farm anymore. Du Pont sees this and, maybe, this
is what drives him mad. That’s what is so tragic about the film – it really is
about the loneliness of wealth, the superficiality of American exceptionalism.
At the end, Dave Schultz can do everything du Pont wants him to except lie to
that camera and say du Pont is his mentor – because, unlike Mark, Dave is less
concerned with image and more concerned with the actual art of the sport.
Steve
Carell, as anyone who likes TV comedies knows, played an iconic character who
desperately wanted to fit in – Michael Scott. John du Pont is similar in this
regard except he shuts down when he realizes that he isn’t one of the boys, no
matter how hard he tries, how much money he has. He knows it to all be an
illusion, like wealth and power are. When his mother dies and he releases the
horses, it’s because well-bred animals are nothing more than ill-earned
trophies – not like the trophy Mark shows the school kids in the beginning, which
he earned through hard work and perseverance.
Miller –
in the scene where du Pont is staring at the documentary lifelessly – does a
good job of chronicling his demise from sanity.
It’s not too talky or “psychological” – the way Carell, a very expressive
actor, conveys little emotion in conversations is more telling and interesting
than any line of dialogue he delivers. The script suggests many reasons why du
Pont may have gone insane – but it’s Miller’s choice to frame the story in the
poetry of cinema that makes this movie a leap into an aesthetic portrait rather
than a thrilling drama. He’s an artist reminding us of his craft and reminding
us that stories, even mysteries, are artifice – Miller is a filmmaker who wants
to make us feel, who wants du Pont’s bullet to his us in the stomach, not just
Ruffalo. He wants us to grapple with emptiness, with meaninglessness, with
tragedy.
Greig
Fraser (Zero Dark Thirty, Bright Star) is a cinematographer in
tune with Miller’s vision about damaged people navigating an American landscape
that’s both beautiful and tragically hollow. The way he captures horses
escaping their pen, stuffed owls, American flags and wrestlers suggests that we
need to look underneath the image for meaning. That’s why the scriptwriters choose
to set this piece 10 years before it actually happens: they want to remind us
that the idea of America is a morally deprived one. Reagan symbolized America
at its greatest and most powerful – we can’t help remember that his image was
one bereft of meaning as well. Because – as the richer get richer and poorer
get poorer – America (“USA! USA!”) is a society of polarized citizens, selfish
consumers and imperialist rulers.
By 1987,
16,908 people would die of AIDS. Reagan wouldn’t give his first speech about
AIDS until this year. It remained invisible to the general public, an
afterthought rather than a pressing epidemic. Homosexuality is embedded
throughout the film; repression haunts its central character. Wrestling – by
nature – involves male/male contact. Du Pont is fascinated by this sport – he
only married once for a span of 90 days, never bothering to take up a wife
after that. Why was he attracted to wrestling? This physical, touchy sport?
Entrenched in eroticism yet so utterly American? This is another mystery the script grapples
with. When du Pont holds onto Mark Schultz’s abdomen, Schultz recoils. The
elements of repression are there – a repression that was so fundamental, in
1987, in our political culture.
You’ll
watch and, even if you know it’s coming, it hurts nonetheless. Don’t watch it
expecting a character-film or you will be disappointed: there are strong
characters, but they exist in an external reality of triumph and loss, of repression
and brutality. The perspective always shifts so you never know what this movie is particularly about at its
center: du Pont’s madness, the relationship between Mark and Dave, the
relationship between Mark and du Pont. It does meander slightly into the melodramatic
in scenes with John’s mother (sorry Vanessa Redgrave, but you were given a thin
role); they sometimes work, but don’t feel integrated well-enough.
But Foxcatcher works because of its loose
structure, its bird-like hover over these inscrutable events. And it’s up to
us, by the end of the film, to wrestle with the mystery of Foxcatcher, even if it
eludes us.
Check out David's formal review here.