The film “
Foxcatcher”, directed by Bennett Miller, and
written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman, is a slow-paced but absorbing
character drama, centering around wrestling and the team in the 1988 Olympics
in Seoul, Korea, and the tragedy that follows.
Stylistically, the film combines elements of late 1980s storytelling
(which I like, and so do a lot other moviegoers) with the close-up intensity
and mystery of Alfred Hitchcock (who probably would have directed this if he
were still alive), with a touch of eccentricity of the Christopher Nolan and
David Lynch brand. The film, though long
(134 minutes), is rather simply filmed (almost in dogme), with the usual 1.85:1
aspect so that the face and body closeups dominate.
It is based in large part on the booklet “Wrestling with
Madness: John E. Du Pont and the Foxcatcher Farm Murder”, website (inexpensive
purchase)
here.
As the film opens, we are presented with the Schultz
brothers, Mark (Channing Tatum) and David (Mark Ruffalo), who look and act like
Jacob and Esau from Genesis. David has
raised Mark after a family tragedy, and as both men aim at wrestling careers,
Mark has trouble getting out from under the charisma of his older brother. One day, however, in early 1987, Mark gets a
bizarre phone call in his apartment (in New York State). His new benefactor is to be John Du Pont
(Steve Carell), who wants to use his family fortune to do the patriotic thing
and sponsor a winning wrestling team in the 1988 Olympics, to help end Ronald
Reagan’s years in glory. He’s also interested birds and in stamp collection,
and general philanthropy.
You can tell that Du Pont is a little creepy. His mouth is always agape, and he stares as
he talks to Mark. Remember Carell’s
roles before. He has hosted SNL, and he
starred as the “man-o-lantern” in “The 40 Year Old Virgini”, where his chest is
strip-waxed on camera. This role seems
to fit all the others.
Then, remember that pretty boy Channing Tatum starred in
“Magic Mike” (July 1, 2012), where a female character asked his avatar, “Why do
you shave your legs for work?” All of
this sets up the innuendo. Du Pont is
constantly intrusive and meddlesome as the wrestling team works on his
“Foxcatcher” farm. When the ride a chopper together to a dinner in New York,
John takes out the cocaine, and introduces Mark to it, and Mark is quite
unwilling. And never do we hear Nancy
Reagan on background TV say “Just say no to drugs.” It’s also apparent, two-thirds into the
movie, that John (who married once with an annulment in 90 days) has a gay
crush on Mark. The homoerotic tension
boils, in and off the wrestling mats. It’s
hard to imagine wrestling in the straight world without the protection of
homophobia.
The sequence at the end of the movie, recreating John’s
murder of David in 1996, is a bit muddy. History says that John had become a
paranoid schizophrenic. The film would
leave the impression that David somehow kept him from a bigger relationship
with Mark. By the way, the AIDS epidemic is never mentioned, although research
in the 1980s could have used John’s money.
It’s also not so clear why David joins Foxcatcher in the
middle of the movie, since Mark has said that David cannot be bought with
money. But David becomes a dedicated trainer again, even helping Mark make weight in vomiting sessions.
Vanessa Redgrave is terrific as John’s moralistic mom, who
even says that “wrestling is low”.
The film is a lot more subtle than comparable films about
boxing (“Raging Bull”, “Cinderella Man”, and even the “Rocky” series).
The film has an effective piano score by Robert Simonsen. Stylistically, the music fits in with other contemporary piano music from young NYC composers like Ted Hearne and Timo Andres.
The official site is
here Annapurna pictures (Zero Dark Thirty) produced the film, and Sony chose to
use its Sony Pictures Classics brand rather than Columbia Pictures, and this
movie fits Columbia’s own brand culture to a T, complete with liberty
statue.
The film was shot largely around Pittsburgh, although it the
story takes place in the Brandywine valley in SE Pennsylvania.
It;s worthy of note that in the 1988 Olympics, diver Greg Louganis ("Breaking the Surface") became the subject of controversy.
I saw this film late Monday at Angelika Mosaic in Merrifield
VA with a moderate crowd for a weekday.
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