Few things are more pathetic than a rich person overcompensating for their problems by throwing a fortune around.
This sense of a spoiled child playing with a toy until it breaks permeates the unsettling fact-based “Foxcatcher.”
The child was millionaire John du Pont- heir to one of the largest chemical companies in the world and scion of one of America’s richest families – played by Steve Carell as a hunched gargoyle.
The toy was Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz, played by Channing Tatum, whom du Pont took under his wing and corrupted.
In the process du Pont estranged Mark from his brother Dave (a former wrestling coach at the University of Wisconsin – Madison).
Dupont fancied himself a father figure and mentor to Mark.
But if Schultz had problems, including feeling overshadowed by his brother, played by Kenosha native Mark Ruffalo, DuPont was mentally unstable.
He had a law enforcement fetish and collected weaponry.
He created an Olympic training facility on the family’s Foxcatcher estate out of exaggerated sense patriotism, inflated self importance and to impress his flinty, disapproving mother, played by Vanessa Redgrave, and invited Mark to live and train there.
Unfortunately, his support came with a price. The bill came due if you challenged or disagreed with him.
And Dave did just that with fatal consequences.
“Foxcatcher” is a triumph of prosthetics – adenoidal Carell’s shark fin nose; mouth-breathing Tatum’s jutting jaw and puffy face; Ruffalo’s giant forehead, receding hairline and beard – that render the actors all but unrecognizable.
But it is the slow motion pacing and stylized physicality turns their performances into a painful reanimation. When Tatum and Ruffalo bump into each other like bears, it is a loving gesture. When the fatuous, flawed du Pont attempts physical familiarity it has the awkwardness of someone who bought what he has not earned, with a homoerotic subtext.
The director Bennett Miller and co-screenwriter Dan Futterman also wrote and directed “Capote. Like it “Foxcatcher” uses starkness and stillness to explore the shadowy lives of isolated, alienated and emotionally inarticulate men.
Three 1/2 stars
With Channing Tatum, Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Michael Hall, Guy Boyd, Brett Rice. Produced by Anthony Bregman, Megan Elison, Jon Kilik, Bennett Miller. Written by E. Max Frye, Dan Futterman, Directed by Bennet Miller. Rated R; violence, language, drug use. Approximate running time: 134 minutes.
Posted by