Starring: Channing Tatum, Steve Carrell, Mark Ruffalo
After winning gold at the 1984 Olympic Games, Mark Schultz
(Tatum) is at a loose end and struggling financially. Much to Mark’s relief, an
eccentric multi-millionaire and wrestling enthusiast John du Pont (Carrell)
wants Mark and his brother Dave (Ruffalo) for his national wrestling team based
out of his large estate. But the offer turns out too good to be true when du
Pont’s personal quirks turn rather menacing.
Foxcatcher is based on a true story that rocked the sport of
wrestling and America in 1996 but
remained something of an obscure tale outside of those circles and whilst
Bennett Miller’s account does take certain liberties with the reality (something
that has rubbed wrestler Mark Schultz up the wrong way) the story of the
Foxcatcher wrestling team is a fascinating one that is, even with the
alterations, well realised.
In another sense, alterations do make the film stand out.
Namely, the alterations around actor Steve Carrell as John du Pont. Best known
for his work in comedies, Carrell’s work takes a darker turn here reminiscent
of the unusual but great casting of Robin Williams in One Hour Photo (2002).
Like Williams, Carrell always had a flare for drama such as the pathos as a
suicidal Prouse academic coming to terms with his homosexuality in Little Miss
Sunshine(2006), but this is far darker stuff and Carrell, complete with prosthetic
nose and thicker features works wonders.
The trick with Foxcatcher isn’t the out and out sinister
nature of du Pont himself or the surroundings but something far more subtle and
slow-burning. This has its reward as the film seeps into the consciousness and
completely enthrals and entraps but it is a slow ride to get there and many
looking for a more intense experience may be left wanting especially with the
more grounded performances of Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffallo but the film
well put together and its slow pace helps give the film that encroaching sense
of unease.
The film’s setting does provide challenges all their own. The
film takes place later and over a longer period than shown in the film and the
details certain characters are changed to suit the plot. Perhaps most notably,
du Pont’s mother plays an integral part of the plot, coldly played by Vanessa
Redgrave and setting up some of John du Pont’s backstory and
partially-explaining his own…peculiarities (eg: firing a handgun in the gym,
wanting to be referred to as “Golden Eagle”) when in reality, Mrs. du Pont died
before the establishment of the Team Foxcatcher depicted in the film. Still,
that depth provided by her works well into the plot and provides colouring or
du Pont who seems often less than sane (the real du Pont was later declared
mentally ill, but not technically insane) and his interactions with Mark
Schultz (often seeming to be shown as not the sharpest tool in the shed) have a
noticeable layer of homoeroticism to them, easily achieved in such a physically
intimate sport as wrestling.
When I heard the film was going to be made, I already knew
some details of the du Pont case and thought it would be a fertile subject to
explore and, even if what is there is often untrue or exaggerated, I got a good
and interesting story that with the aid of an ambient score by Rob Simonsen a
film that as informative as it is, really hits ground not at an intellectual
level but at the level of the instinct of dread and foreboding.
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