Foxcatcher wrestles pathology of privilege


It’s no joke that funny people often harbor an inherent desire to be taken seriously.

Crazy like a fox · Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is invited to the estate of deranged millionaire John du Pont (Steve Carell) to train for the 1988 games in Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher.  - Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Crazy like a fox · Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is invited to the estate of deranged millionaire John du Pont (Steve Carell) to train for the 1988 games in Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher. – Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

For actors, this desire can lead to a hunger for darker, more dramatic roles. Jim Carrey spent years stretching his rubber-faced comedy routine to the limit before surprising audiences with a string of soulfully subdued performances in The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The late, great Robin Williams was a seriocomic omnivore, reigning in his manic, freewheeling energy to play profoundly broken men in The Fisher King and One Hour Photo. After a lengthy absence from the screen (contributions to Wes Anderson’s oeuvre notwithstanding), Bill Murray returned as a sad-eyed pathos generator in Lost in Translation. Even Adam Sandler felt compelled to add depth to his standard man-child histrionics in Punch-Drunk Love. Now, with the release of director Bennett Miller’s absorbing psychodrama Foxcatcher, Steve Carell seems destined to join their ranks.

The comic actor, best known for playing the trident-throwing, lamp-loving simpleton Brick Tamland in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and the well-meaning but clueless Michael Scott on The Office, is nearly unrecognizable as eccentric millionaire John du Pont, the real-life heir to a vast chemical company fortune whose obvious mental illness — he’s eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia — has been enabled and amplified by a life of unchecked power and privilege.

Simply put: What Mr. du Pont wants, Mr. du Pont gets, and as Miller’s film opens, there’s nothing the self-proclaimed “ornithologist, philatelist and philanthropist” wants more than to turn his family’s sprawling Foxcatcher Farm into a world-class training facility for U.S. Olympic wrestlers, a place where he can serve as coach, mentor and daily inspiration to the men tasked with restoring greatness to America.

To accomplish this, du Pont sets out to recruit brothers Mark (Channing Tatum) and David Schultz (Mark Ruffalo), both Olympic gold medalists, to serve as the team’s leaders. Mark, eager to escape the shadow of the sibling who practically raised him, volunteers to relocate to du Pont’s estate to train for the upcoming 1988 games in Seoul. Once there, he finds himself inexorably drawn to the strange, soft-spoken aristocrat and gradually descends into a life of cocaine-fueled excess and low-key homoeroticism. David, hoping to break du Pont’s psychological hold on his brother after months of estrangement, moves out to Foxcatcher Farm with his wife and childen to oversee the team’s progress, a decision that ultimately proves tragic.

Miller, a filmmaker who previously demonstrated a great aptitude for dramatizing historical events in Moneyball and Capote, does a commendable job of examining these three men and the series of events that led them to become so fatefully entangled, to the point where the triptych begins to take on the elements of Greek tragedy. The script, co-written by Dan Futterman and E. Max Frye, lays out compelling reasons for each character’s individual neurosis or neuroses — du Pont’s withholding equestrian mother (Vanessa Redgrave) who views wrestling as a “low sport,” Mark and David’s dangerous co-dependence stemming from a childhood lived on the road — all without giving away the purposely abrupt ending, which comes as a sudden, sickening shock, even for those who remember the true story, which reached its harrowing conclusion in the winter of 1996.

Hidden beneath layers of makeup and a hooked prosthetic nose that gives his face the appearance of a well-fed bird of prey, Carell, once thought to be an actor whose range was decidedly limited to loveable underdogs and harmless goofballs, gives an understated yet transformative performance that dazzles and disturbs in equal measure. He’s been building to this role for a while now, from the suicidal gay uncle in Little Miss Sunshine to the emotionally abusive stepfather in last year’s The Way Way Back, but this is a true breakthrough. Everything about his du Pont, from his thousand-yard stare to his precise but emotionless manner of speaking, is designed to unsettle without resorting to the realm of weirdo caricature. An Oscar nomination is a virtual certainty at this point.

Tatum, meanwhile, shows off his own greatly improved dramatic chops as Mark, whose strong-but-silent exterior masks a seething cauldron of impotent rage towards the sibling he both resents and reveres, while Ruffalo believably embodies David, a genuinely nice guy who wants to do right by Mark without uprooting his family in the process. An early scene of the two brothers wrestling together, their bodies contorted in a delicate dance of submission, establishes their relationship better than words ever could.

To be clear: Foxcatcher is more than just a superior acting showcase. It’s also a fairly damning critique of American exceptionalism and a deeply unnerving look at old money’s inbred view of the world. John du Pont was a man who thought he could buy and break human athletes the way his mother kept and groomed horses, and when reality failed to live up to his warped perception, cold-blooded murder became the only option.

Landon McDonald is a graduate student studying public relations. His column, “Screen Break,” runs Fridays.