Respond to these rapid questions in our Foxcatcher quiz and we will tell you which Foxcatcher character you are. Play it now.
Note from the editor: Because “Foxcatcher” is based on a true murder case with information that is public record, this review goes into great length about those circumstances.
Based on a true murder case in which a wealthy patron hired two wrestler brothers, attempted to woo and manipulate one of them, and ultimately murdered the other, “Foxcatcher” is a touching, perceptive, and deadly serious drama. It is sincere in every single frame. It also harkens back to the commercial filmmaking of the 1970s, cowritten by E. Max Frye (“Something Wild”) and Dan Futterman (“Capote”) and directed by Bennett Miller (“Capote,” “Moneyball”). The majority of it unfolds in lengthy takes with medium- or long-distance shots that emphasize the surroundings of the protagonists, with little to no musical augmentation (or interference) of the dramatic action. It has scenes that are reminiscent of the late Alan J. Pakula’s understated films (“All the President’s Men,” “The Parallax View,” and “Comes a Horseman”).
However, “Foxcatcher” ultimately proves to be difficult to accept due to fundamental errors in performance, direction, and makeup, as well as some awkwardness in the way it attempts to make some sort of great statement about American ideals, or the lack thereof. This would be near the top of my list of movies that I regret not like the most.
Its central narrative is a tale of sibling rivalry and love that finally ends tragically. We subsequently learn that the strong friendship between Olympic wrestlers Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) and his older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo) is a result of their shared childhood tragedy. Not only did they grow up together, but Dave raised Mark in place of his biological father. Mark is already wilting in his brother’s shadow as the story starts. They both received Olympic wrestling gold, but Dave is the friendlier and more useful of the two. He has established a coaching career and settled down to start a family. Mark spends his free time alone like a monk, eating Ramen noodles in his bachelor pad, and appears to be single with no friends or sex desire. Channing Tatum portrays him as a cartoon caveman with a protruding chin who trudges around in sweats, and regretfully overplays him in certain instances.
Then Steve Carell’s character, billionaire John Eleuthère du Pont, calls and asks Mark to visit Foxcatcher, an 800-acre horse farm in Pennsylvania, to assist in building a top-notch training facility that will assist in preparing the American Olympic squad for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Mark boards a helicopter and rapidly gives in to the allure of opulent quarters and a reliable paycheck. (In one of the film’s many agonizingly accurate depictions of how the wealthy prey on class-based ignorance, John asks Mark to name his price; Mark responds with a figure that John could probably pull from couch cushions, and John nods as if doing Mark a great favor.)
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Two terrifying truths are revealed. One is that Mark is primarily of interest to John as a channel to his brother, who is more qualified for the coaching role and the associated public responsibilities. The other is that John is a repressed homosexual who became obsessed with wrestling in part to set himself apart from his mother Jean (Vanessa Redgrave), a socialite and horse breeder. John wants to possess and dominate Mark or, at the very least, keep him at Foxcatcher because he cannot bear to be rejected, even though he doesn’t even remotely exhibit any signs of sexual desire.
The key to what the movie is doing or trying to do may be John’s aversion to rejection, and all of its insights in this regard are perceptive. Everybody dislikes being told “no,” but wealthy men often take it personally because their entire existence is based on being catered to, followed, and amused, even when their demands are absurd or irrational. (This is why John’s attraction to Mark makes real-world sense, if not always movie sense: when Mark resists him, personally or professionally, it’s a knife in the heart of his identity, because there’s nothing attractive about him aside from his wealth, and as the Beatles once famously sang, money can’t buy you love.)
Mark is not, to put it bluntly, the smartest tool in the drawer, and he finds his ashy, clumsy, prematurely doddering customer revolting, just as we do. However, Mark is also carrying around a tremendous amount of emotional weight as a result of his early life. In addition to seeing John as someone who has positioned him at the center of his life after many years in which Mark felt abandoned and mistreated, he also appears to consider John as a father figure, an alternative elder brother, a boss, and a friend. We learn that Mark understands John’s troubles on some level despite the fact that John never expresses them to Mark, his pupil, employee, surrogate son, and ultimately, lover, in large part due to Tatum’s inherently sympathetic spirit. He portrays Mark as a reclusive yet incredibly sympathetic individual. There are times when Mark seems to look at his boss with sympathy and affection in addition to contempt and loathing. Just because Mark can’t express his sentiments doesn’t imply he doesn’t have any.
Foxcatcher Quiz
The film’s carefully crafted funereal tone—overcast sky, autumnal hues, and somber solo piano music—leads you to believe that this story would ultimately end in a murderous doom spiral that may have been called “An American Meathead Tragedy.” After destroying Mark with unhealthy eating, cocaine, drink, psychological terrorism, and sexual exploitation, John du Pont eventually succeeded in bringing Dave Schultz out to Foxcatcher to take over coaching the squad, insuring that he would fail at a position he wasn’t suited to anyhow. Years after Mark became frustrated and left, John killed Dave in a driveway on the Foxcatcher property, outside the modest cottage the wrestling coach shared with his wife (Sienna Miller, who manages to be endearing despite having little to do). 2010 saw the death of the brothers’ benefactor in a jail. The sport of cage fighting, which is later in the movie depicted as a demeaning show in contrast to the Greco-Roman classicism that the Schultz brothers much admired, is one in which Mark eventually reinvented himself. Such waste, such heartache.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this Foxcatcher quiz.
Since Dave seems like that rarest of movie rarities—a good man who’s also fun and exciting to watch—as written by Frye and Futterman and portrayed by Ruffalo, his death is genuinely shocking, not just because it’s presented in such a banal way (everyone at the murder scene appears to be having a hard time believing that this is actually happening). One of the most eye-opening moments in the film involves Dave being invited to participate in an interview for a video tribute to John’s leadership of the team. He must claim that his emotionally distant and physically mediocre employer is a wonderful leader and sportsman. Dave hesitates and stutters as he mulls over the client’s request in his head, trying to come up with a response that will win the client over without compromising his morals. This sequence, about how difficult it is to balance integrity with the need to make a livelihood, is made into a short movie by Ruffalo’s wonderfully modulated reactions, which are filmed, like so many “Foxcatcher” moments, in long, uncut, squirm-inducing closeups.
But how are we expected to interpret any of this? You might ask yourself that after watching “Foxcatcher,” and I’m sorry to say that the movie doesn’t really provide much of an answer beyond the statement, “This is a terribly tragic narrative based on real events.” “Foxcatcher” has a penchant of overdoing and overselling Big Ideas that aren’t so big, and that in any case are already being explored through the primary characters. This may sound weird given how quiet and visually restrained the film is.
The most prominent of these is that the John-Mark dyad serves as a metaphor for American capitalism’s exploitation of labor; Miller and his screenwriters cram this in with references to American history, images of historical monuments and battle sites, the U.S. Capitol, lush fields, and patriotic songs like “America the Beautiful” and “This Land is Your Land.” The low-key, realistic tone doesn’t work well with overt symbolism, and John and Mark’s relationship is about a rich old bastard literally sticking it to a working man, so what else needs to be said there, really? I am not convinced that any of this iconographic mucking around was necessary or even advisable. As we see these men struggle, suffer, and deceive themselves, the wider implications and personal stakes become increasingly obvious, or at least they should.
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We learn that John’s murder was a delayed reaction to Mark rejecting him. It was also the result of John’s unchecked volatile behavior that was evident throughout the story, including one instance where he tried to “motivate” his wrestling team by shooting a revolver over their heads while they were practicing. The implicitness of the rich’s haughtiness and the working class’s pliancy is furthered by this, even as it blends with the psychology of the characters. With John repeatedly demanding to be flattered and indulged and refusing to respect boundaries (emotional, sexual, financial, and professional), the movie does a good job of portraying the central triangle of Mark-Dave-John in terms of power and wealth. Both brothers try, to the extent that they can, to brush off John’s terrible behavior or justify it in light of the opportunities he provides them.
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Carell’s performance and the cosmetics that is designed to enhance it are the other main issues. Both seemed to be both too much and not enough—grossly mismanaged in every sense of the word. I have no doubt that Carrell will receive an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of John du Pont because the character is complex and grotesque and the movie has a very different tone from shows like “The 40-Year Old Virgin” and “The Office.” Carrell is a fantastic actor, especially when acting in a light or broad comic mode. But this just struck me as the most misguided Important Performance under heavy makeup since Jack Nicholson sputtered and yelled through “Hoffa” beneath a false nose and forehead that seemed to have been muddled onto his face, or perhaps since Nicole Kidman won an Oscar for “The Hours” with her nose, or even since Nicole Kidman and her nose won an Oscar for “The Hours.”
In this movie, Carell’s proboscis rests there, beneath a visible latex forehead extension, rather than joining his face. Under Miller’s direction, Carell uses these prosthetic enhancements, which have a little different hue and texture from the rest of the actor’s face, in overtly evident ways, as if the makeup were a real object like a hat or cane. Carell literally looks down his nose at other people for more than half of his on-screen time, and when he walks, he protrudes his head forward like a rotted old turkey. This would all seem perfectly natural and hilarious in a film based on sketch humor, but it feels strangely out of place in this film, as if the most repulsive “Saturday Night Live” character ever were playing the part of John du Pont. (Tatum’s face has also been puttied out, and Ruffalo’s hair and beard are meticulously maintained, but they don’t overwhelm the actors’ work quite as jarringly, save in one regrettable scene: a cut revealing Mark’s post-sexual exploitation by John has him wearing a frosted Kept Boy hairpiece that looks from a distance like a fur cap.)
Given how consistently good, if not excellent, “Foxcatcher” is, all of this is frustrating. When they use the naturally personal physicality of wrestling to convey the affection that brothers might not otherwise be able to express, Tatum and Ruffalo are generally excellent. The story’s core is one of intense melancholy and repressed rage, a pervasive misery that is both personal and political. But the encrusted Americana, strange makeup and performance touches, and dramatic omissions (there are essentially only the primary three characters) suffocate it. John du Pont’s nose serves as a symbol for the movie’s moral blunders: it’s bad and possibly unnecessary, but the movie already committed to it, so we’re stuck with it.
For more personality quizzes check this: Victor Frankenstein Quiz.
