Review: You Must Catch 'Foxcatcher'

I’ve always liked Steve Carell even if at times I haven’t been so thrilled by the movies he’s made. Somewhere under the often ridiculous comedy there is something ‘going on’ I find, something behind the eyes, some sadness or pathos at least. Ben Stiller and Robin Williams have the same thing and it is very alluring as well as incredibly skilled. Carell’s ‘serious’ side was shown off in ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ but not to the extent it is in ‘Foxcatcher’. 

Foxcatcher tells us the (by me at least) forgotten story of the Schultz brothers, Mark and Dave, American Olympic gold medallists in wrestling, who accepted patronage of John Du Pont  (heir to the Du Pont family chemical company fortune). Du Pont had an obsession for wrestling a sport he was never good enough to compete in himself. The film explores how he plays out this obsession through the Schultz brothers (particularly Mark), a team of fit young blokes at the Foxcatcher farm camp near Philadelphia in the 90s. The film shows the erratic, eccentric, cold and charmless DuPont mentoring and manipulating his charges and growing more erratic and possibly unravelling mentally as he edges closer to his ideal of an Olympic gold medal. I have to say I found it extraordinary that a wealthy individual (and/or his company) could be the patron (through financial gift)of a nation’s Olympic team – or am I naïve and ignorant?

Carell is creepy and cold and the progression into something ‘mad’ to deliver the denouement (no spoiler here) is totally convincing and shocking. Couple this performance with a fine portrait of Mark Schultz by Channing Tatum and a taut and touching portrayal of Dave by Mark Ruffalo and you have a great ensemble piece in a difficult story beautifully directed by Bennett Miller.  I’d also commend Vanessa Redgrave in the tiny but integral role of Mother DuPont and Guy Boyd as Du Pont’s adviser/lawyer. One quibble on the way Mark Schultz was written though. He is offered to us as a bit sullen and thick, perhaps a bit sub-par intellectually and yet we know he was a college graduate and has continued to do well in the world. I hope this wasn’t an easy target choice to gain empathy or manipulate the audience to take ‘sides’, love the simpleton, hate the monster. That would be a terrible condescension.

The film seems to me to tiptoe around two gay themes, wrestling/surrounding oneself with fit young guys in skimpy outfits rubbing up against each other and the relationship between Du Pont and Mark. Schultz has recently gone a bit ferral about what he sees as the film’s suggestion he and DuPont might have done the deed. I didn’t see that although I think there is an undercurrent in one scene where I thought ‘hello, what’s happening there’. In some ways though the film goes more machosexual than homosexual, he appears to valorize macho power through his own being, through how he sees those in his circle and how he views his nation being ‘great and powerful’. He certainly objectifies those around him so you wonder in what way he values them or simply seeks to possess them or control them certainly there’s an element of domination which gets a bit yucky really. And as for wrestling, surely no one denies the homo-eroticism in wrestling do they?

And I certainly did have a knowing smirk when a huge army tank he buys is delivered and he gets very shitty to discover the gun he asked for didn’t come with the tank. Hmmm?  

In the end I’m not sure it matters but is the shying away from any explicit gay scenes because factually it’s uncertain (or nonsense) or a bit of primness in case certain parts of the cinema industry (Oscars) and the potential audience (sports loving religious) might find ‘difficult’.

Whatever, this is a fine film ,well made and splendidly acted. It’s a horror film without the gore and splatter, even sans a piercing soundtrack.

4 out of 5