Foxcatcher is an unusual film. It dresses itself up as a standard sports drama, packing it with all the clichéd characters of a driven but misguided athlete and an aging mentoring coach, tumbling them along the expected path of failure to championship before pulling the rug out from under us in a wild left turn that, well, is entirely the reason the movie got made. What makes it work so well though is that while the conventional A,B,C’s are all in place for a Rocky-esque inspirational crowd-pleaser, it’s actually a bitter, troubling character study of two volatile personalities and a collision that seems, in reflection, unavoidable.
The story follows Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), an Olympic Gold medal-winning wrestler who is now barely making ends meet, still training with his more successful older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo), he also a Gold medal winner at the same 1984 games. Seeing great potential in Mark is John du Pont (Steve Carell), heir to the Du Pont fortune and avid wrestling fan, wanting to build the next Olympic team at his Foxcatcher estate. He flies Mark to Delaware to look at the facility and offers him a place to live, train, and lead a new team. Mark accepts, trying to get out from under his older brother’s shadow, and while John at first sees that Mark is capable, realizes that he needs Dave’s expertise to make it all work. After some initial resistance, Dave finally agrees and moves his family, including his wife Nancy (Sienna Miller) to the grounds. It will be a decision with terrible consequences.
Foxcatcher earned a lot of attention before release in the casting of Carell, a well-known comedian, in taking on a decidedly very dramatic part (certainly not new). Layered in extensive makeup and prosthetics to alter his appearance, his final performance of the real John du Pont got him an Academy Award nomination (along with Ruffalo), disappearing into the dark recesses of a man flaking away into oblivion. It’s a risky performance, as it so easily could have slipped right into wince-worthy parody, but Carell’s quiet, compulsive attention to detail in bringing Du Pont into the light is pretty remarkable. This is subtle but chilling work.
Du Pont lives in the shadow of his aging and ill mother (Vanessa Redgrave), she a woman of great wealth, her stable of world class horses her greatest joy and source of pride, something she makes no effort to hide; a large room in the house is dedicated entirely to her trophies. John has no interest in the animals yet is of course troubled by her lack of attention to him and his own pursuits. She tolerates his wrestling hobby but thinks it lower than the natural, classical appeal of thoroughbred breeding. The name Foxcatcher is a long favored one, historically attached to the family’s equine achievements.
So it is that throughout the film, as we watch the tinderbox relationship of Mark and John unfold, the addition of Dave fueling further conflict as John’s state of mind deteriorates, it is John’s mother who lingers in the peripheral, his need for approval clearly pressing him to do things beyond reasonable. This is right when she decides it’s time to give this wrestling thing a look-see.
We’re just past halfway point in the film and in the story, John has demonstrated time and time again that while he surely loves the sport – even participating in an over 50s league – is a peculiar man. He’s got plenty of money but no leadership skills and no real coaching ability. This is where Dave has proven invaluable, John giving him carte-blanc to get the expanding team championship ready. The Olympic trials are coming and John is hoping Mark and others will be selected. But things are already beginning to crumble, especially with an earlier incident involving Mark that has put a huge wedge between them. Mark’s not a super smart guy, but you wrong him once, and you’re out for good.
So at this moment, John is already weakened, slowly meandering about the large gymnasium while Dave has the wrestlers doing drills. When John’s mother comes in, pushed in a wheelchair by her nurse, the room immediately is sapped of air, a bristling tension replacing it as John is suddenly overcome by a need to prove himself … again.
What follows is a mesmerizing but deeply uncomfortable sequence where Du Pont calls the boys in and tries to deliver a pep talk, though is haplessly ill-equipped to do so. Then, worse, he beckons one of the wrestlers to join him and proceeds to deliver a basic coaching lesson, constantly keeping his attention on his mother, who sits unmoving in the distance, a blank, unfavorable expression on her withered face. Never has more been said without a single word spoken.
What I like about this moment is how it fully draws back the curtain on John, completing a circle from a time not long before when he sat with his mother asking for space in the trophy room to display his winnings, her tone and remarks not unlike that used to speak to a child. Here, we see John make a grand gesture, a chance – perhaps the first ever – to present his efforts to the only judge that matters in this sport he loves. Watch how, after he huddles the team in around him, most taking a knee or squatting on the mats, he divides them so she has a clear view of him standing over them. His speech then invokes sportsmanship and pride, telling the boys they need to represent Foxcatcher and American well, not just to be good wrestlers, but good citizens.
That all should be inspiring, but John’s weak voice, his nervous pauses and small juts of pacing about the mat strip him of any power, his motivations not on the team but instead on his mother. When John then awkwardly ‘coaches’ one of the wrestlers, the others watching what they know is Day One basics, she finally has enough and rolls out of the room. It’s devastating. What’s more powerful is how director Bennett Miller cuts to Dave, sitting with his team, seeing what is happening and realizing, like most in the room, who John really is. What he does next is telling of not only who Dave is, but how much more tragic his fate will be when John is at last loose of any sense of reality. This is a great movie moment.