Foxcatcher review – Steve Carell excels in a real-life tragedy
Version 0 of 1. Thanks to the heated news and awards attention it has received in recent weeks, it’s unlikely that anyone will find themselves watching Foxcatcher without a working knowledge of its headline-grabbing background. Yet when I first saw this strange and disturbing sports psychodrama last year, I not only knew nothing of the grim, real-life events upon which it was based, but I was also initially unaware that I was watching Steve Carell. So unrecognisable is he as creepy millionaire John Eleuthère du Pont, founder of the titular privately funded wrestling team, that one struggles to spy any semblance of the comic personae previously parlayed in films such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Date Night or even Hope Springs. It’s not just the makeup (pallid skin tones and a prosthetic nose) that hides Carell’s familiar features; everything about him, from his homunculus stance and fidgety demeanour to his wheedling nasal voice and pouting grimace, suggests Brando-esque levels of transformation. Carell may have played things straight before, but not since Robin Williams in One Hour Photo has a comedian put so much clear water between himself and his back catalogue. The fall-out from du Pont’s tormented sports patronage made scandalous headlines in the US in the mid-90s, but UK viewers unfamiliar with the real-life travails of Olympic wrestlers Mark and Dave Schultz are advised to avoid googling the details in advance. Better to allow director Bennett Miller to tell this stranger-than-fiction story with the same engaging intelligence that characterised his previous works, Capote and Moneyball, both of which drew career-best performances from their casts. Foxcatcher is no exception, with Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo utterly convincing as the blue-collar brothers who find themselves dragged into a world of privilege and prejudice at the du Pont family estate in Pennsylvania. It is here that du Pont dreams of creating Team Foxcatcher, a group of world-beating wrestlers for whom he will be figurehead, father, coach and mentor. Yet despite his extravagant wealth and patriotism (the family estate overlooks the historic Valley Forge), du Pont remains pathetically impotent, held in quiet contempt by those whose approval he craves; when he insists that his friends call him “Eagle”, it’s not just Mark (Tatum) who struggles to keep a straight face. Scorned by his mother (a terrifyingly horsey Vanessa Redgrave) who favours the sport of kings over her son’s “low” fancies, du Pont nurses unfulfilled desires that turn to poisonous anger and resentment, with disastrous results. As awards-courting movies such as The Wrestler and The Fighter have reminded us in recent years, the strange world of competitive physical combat offers rich pickings for film-makers wishing to delve into the tortured male psyche. The results are rarely pretty; the real-life Mark Schultz took to social media recently to denounce Miller as a liar, apparently stung by the delayed realisation that Foxcatcher (of which he had previously been supportive) had a homoerotic subtext. Yet for all its dramatic licence (time-frames are skewed and compressed), there is more going on here than frustrated stereotypes. As with his previous works, Miller is less interested in sex than in power and in the twisted ways in which it’s wielded in relationships both personal and professional. Scratch the surface of Carell’s extraordinarily mannered du Pont and we find a touch of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s inimitable Truman Capote, another “cultured” character whose apparently honourable mentoring of a less fortunate soul masks naked ambition and self-pitying rage. In stark contrast to du Pont, the Schultz brothers are not big on talk; early scenes establish their primary communication as physical rather than verbal. The real battle is played out in E Max Frye and Dan Futterman’s script between words and action. If you watched Foxcatcher with the sound turned down, you could still follow its intricate interplays through body language alone: Mark, punchy and defensive; Dave, protective and observant; du Pont, increasingly isolated and embittered. The wrestling sequences are eloquently choreographed, combatants, coaches and observers speaking volumes through gesture rather than dialogue. It helps that Miller has a keen eye for the mundanities of this sporting life. Just as Moneyball lifted the veil on the number-crunching realities of professional baseball, so Foxcatcher wins our confidence with its brooding portrayal of wrestling as a business rather than a sport. Yes, the Schultzes are dedicated to earning their medals and trophies, but they also need to earn a living. And while Dave has little desire to become a pawn in du Pont’s twisted fantasia, the prospect of a more secure life for his family (wife, children, and brother) draws him inexorably toward an ancient battlefield, where storm clouds gather in the chilly Pennsylvania sky. Oh, and I didn’t recognise Sienna Miller either. A picture caption in this article was amended on 12 Feb 2015 to remove a plot spoiler. |