It’s as dramatic as when you first lay eyes on Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull. In Foxcatcher, Steve Carell is not at all the Steve Carell with whom we’ve become accustomed. There’s not a sliver of the character from The Office or The 40 Year Old Virgin to be found. Nor does Carell, fitted with a prosthetic nose, smile once in the film. In one of the year’s very best performances, a super serious Carell gives an uncanny, haunting take on John Eleuthere DuPont.
Those old enough to remember the stir created by DuPont in 1996 may have forgotten how the man who had the Villanova athletic pavilion named after him came to, in disgrace, have his name removed. In this circumspect yet fascinating drama, director Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball) captures the eerie, reticent disposition of DuPont. Drawn to the world of competitive wrestling despite knowing little about it, DuPont lures 1984 Olympic gold medal winner Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) into accepting a residential training and coaching stint at the DuPont Newtown Square, Pa. mansion. A team will be put together to capture the 1988 Olympics medals. Schultz stays in the guest house and trains at a facility, Foxcatcher, that DuPont created merely to satisfy his craving to get himself in the game. Tatum successfully conveys Mark’s gullibility, giving the not very socially savvy Mark a childlike dimension. Mark has long been overshadowed by his older brother, Dave (Mark Ruffalo), a fellow gold medal winner.
Dave has everything Mark doesn’t–a wife and kids, social skills, and a job as a wrestling coach. DuPont wants Dave at Foxcatcher, too, but Dave has little interest, at first, in uprooting his family. Dave is protective and loving of Mark but Mark’s character is so insular that even in the best of time he has trouble reciprocating Mark’s fraternal affection. When Dave is eventually convinced by DuPont to join the Foxcatcher team, tension between the brothers mounts. The straightforward Dave has a hard time figuring out the eccentric DuPont and his volatile relationship with Mark.
DuPont, calmly and increasingly psychopathically, possesses an intensity that takes for granted he’ll get anything wants in life. He already has all the money he needs and more. DuPont wasn’t just a “one percenter” in terms of wealth, he was a part of the 1/10th of one percent of the wealthiest of our population. Watching DuPont inside his world of private jets, helicopters and servants, he seems like a man who has the whole world in his hands.
Then we learn that inside his own family, he must defer to a strong-willed mom (Vanessa Redgrave) to gain permission for something as seemingly slight as what sports trophies will be allowed in which trophy cases. Redgrave hardly has any dialogue yet she is superbly provides the subtext for what inner demons may be lurking inside her increasingky strange-acting son. He rebels against her equestrian interests; she looks down on his penchant for wrestling as ignoble. DuPont, responding to the rare occasion his mom visits a wrestling practice, pretends to actually coach the team so he can show off for her. The scene exposes him as pathetic yet deeply troubled. The movie takes poetic license here since in the real story DuPont’s mom was already dead when he took in Schultz but this is an example of how a condensing of facts can effectively provide dramatic reward. Portraying the truth would have relied on clunky flashbacks and impeded the story. Screenwriters E. Max Frye (the brilliant Something Wild) and Dan Futterman play around with another timeline pertaining to the movie’s climax but their decision here also increases the film’s intensity, all the while staying true to the spirit of the actual events.
Foxcatcher’s great strength is in its rendering so vividly the inevitable enticement wealth and power hold over both the most innocent (Mark Schultz) and the most grounded (his brother Dave). It’s an American tragedy alright, no less so due to DuPont’s hollow talk of patriotic principles, yet the tragedy of DuPont himself resonates. A guy who had everything comes across as a big nothing inside. Adding great insult to injury, we can only begin to guess why.