Stars: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo, Vanessa Redgrave, Sienna Miller
Director: Bennett Miller
Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Actor-Steve Carell, Supporting Actor-Mark Ruffalo, Director, Makeup & Hairstyling, and Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars
(Spoilers Ahead) I actually was not familiar with this particular story, and so while I usually put some sort of snarky aside when I give a spoiler alert to a true story, the argument for this film is a bit different and I genuinely mean it, since this is not only a true-life story, but one that is a bit of a thriller. The film follows Olympic gold medalists Mark (Tatum) and David (Ruffalo) Schultz as they enter the bizarre world of John Du Pont (Carell), a ridiculously wealthy man with absolutely no sense of how the real world operates, being part of one of America's wealthiest (and most inbred) families. John goes about creating a wrestling program at his expansive Foxcatcher Farm, all the while slowly finding ways to manipulate the malleable Mark and finds himself trying to share in the glory of their athletic endeavors.
The film is very atmospheric, and the cinematography by Grieg Fraser is one of the better aspects of the movie. He does a terrific job of making Foxcatcher seem both wildly large, giving us a sense of the distance that John has from the rest of the world and nearly a prison, which is essentially what it becomes for Mark, who slowly finds himself going mad in the shadow of John, who seems to consistently insist on what he say, how he act, and even who he is. The film is probably at its best when we are seeing the weird juxtaposition between seemingly endless wealth and how ordinary people push themselves beyond their means in order to continue to gain from a series of enormous checks.
The movie fails, however, when it strays too far from this by trying to cover or skirt around certain issues when they clearly shouldn't. I feel like there's a giant pink elephant hanging over the movie that felt very distracting when no one dared to even mention it. It's very clear that Bennett Miller, while not abjectly saying that John Du Pont is gay, is willing to put that as a menacing threat over the film. There's a film, darkly lit, likely on purpose, where Mark and John are "wrestling" in the dark. The camera lingers on Channing Tatum's admittedly toned torso whenever it is mirroring John's gaze, and the scene following this late night wrestling match has Tatum with highlighted hair and short shorts, looking very much the part of a cabana boy. It isn't until others (particularly his brother) come into the picture that Mark starts to realize the lengths he has gone to please his boss, and quite frankly this would have been an interesting movie, but Miller spends WAY too much time trying to hint toward homosexuality without actually saying it.
The movie's central three performances are where it should gain its strength (the script, like with the homosexuality angle, is way too concerned with atmosphere and not enough with credible twists of the plot, and is really only focused on the three main men-Vanessa Redgrave's disapproving mother and Sienna Miller's blank wife have absolutely nothing to do with the movie). In some ways this works. Channing Tatum, for starters, is aces as a bulky Adonis with little knowledge about the world and how much people succumb to the power of money. Unlike Steve Carell, his character actually makes sense to be quiet, introverted, and consistently reliant on others to establish himself. Ruffalo as his brother acts a bit as an audience surrogate, which makes his death late in the film all-the-more shocking, since he's served as our rational eyes into this bleak and cold world of John Du Pont (though the "KIDS" written on his hand was massive overkill in the department of trying to get the audience to feel for his death).
Steve Carell, though, in my opinion, almost destroys the movie. I genuinely like Steve Carell, and actually think that he has the grounded nature to be a strong dramatic actor, but he reminded me so much of Felicity Huffman in Transamerica here-letting tics and makeup do what his performance seems incapable of doing. It's partially the screenplay's fault, but he doesn't help us by making staggered speech and an upturned nose proxy for an actual personality. This may well have been the way that John Du Pont acted, but Carell's work here should be better, more insightful into the scenes where he is alone. The fact that Carell is hunting for an Oscar nomination that might otherwise go to someone who is excellent like Jake Gyllenhaal-this is a crime.
And that's probably where I'm going to leave this, though I suspect that there will be more to come in the ensuing weeks about this picture. What were your thoughts on Foxcatcher, yet another cold chapter in Bennett Miller's "Murderers" collection? Do you think Carell or Ruffalo will score with Oscar? Do you think they deserve to? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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