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| Directed by Bennett Miller Written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman |
The events and people depicted in Foxcatcher are ones that can hardly be believed to be real, considering how much they lend themselves to dark somber drama. In fact, even though both of my parents are old enough for them to be in conscious memory, neither of them have any recollection of ever hearing about them before sitting down to watch the movie. But a true story, it somehow is, and like last year's big serious based on a true story sports movie Rush, it's a pretty excellent showcase of fantastic performances.
In the 1980's, John du Pont, eccentric heir to a massive estate, decided to start up his own amateur wrestling team using part of his fortune, hoping that his Team Foxcatcher would make it into the Olympics for the United States. In 1996, he shot the team's rising star Dave Schultz seemingly out of the blue, and was eventually discovered to have paranoid schizophrenia.
Foxcatcher sets out to explore just what slipped out of place in John's head, but along the way can not help but touch upon the bizarre mix of athletic fanaticism, opulent power highs, actual highs, and almost toxic masculinity that went into du Pont's psyche. Steve Carrel gets the lead role as du Pont himself, Channing Tatum plays the washed up Olympian wrestler Mark Schultz whom du Pont recruits for his crazy idea, and Mark Ruffalo plays a fellow Olympian as Dave, who tries to intervene with his brother but ends up sucked into du Pont's web.
The big story surrounding this movie has been fantastic performances, and they are amazing, I fully expect Carrel and Tatum to be up for Oscar nominations. Through some fantastic physical acting and restraint by Steve Carrel, even if you don't know about the events that inspired Foxcatcher, you can tell that something isn't quite right with John du Pont. Channing Tatum shows himself to have quite a bit of range playing Mark, portraying the kind of easily moved around emotionally fragile lunkhead that would get sucked into such a crazy thing from such a bizarre man, and Mark Ruffalo is fantastic playing the good man trying to keep his brother from getting involved.
The cast is amazing, and certainly a big draw, but Foxcatcher is also concerned with the American psyche at the time that it depicts. du Pont seems like the kind of man that, having found massive amounts of money by inheritance, and having never had to work for a living at any point in his life, would spend much of that money on sudden special interests and try to turn himself into the ideal of bold masculinity. He loves the Stars and Stripes, muscular guns and actual guns, and speaks quite a bit of turning his wrestling team into an inspiration for American men to the point that he insists people start calling him "the Eagle", but he can't back it up. He's not a pioneer or a captain of industry, or even an especially good wrestling coach, but some rich nut descended from great men with a ridiculously over inflated ego.
Foxcatcher may end up on my best of the year list, and it might not, but it's a fantastic somber drama, an almost guaranteed Oscar frontrunner, and is more than worth seeing. It's currently in a limited release before working up towards a full one in January, but if it's playing near you I recommend checking it out.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
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