CREDIT: Scott Garfield, Sony Pictures Classics Foxcatcher has all the trappings of a great movie. It has that weight. It has everything a flick needs to be a Movie People Will Talk About During Oscar Season: intense, disappear-into-the-prosthetics-and-the-parts performances; a dark, true story; sports as a metaphor for America; a lingering sense of despair that serves to acknowledge that this movie, like life, will not be tied up neatly in a bow, that there is not always a happy ending for everyone everywhere all of the time. Foxcatcher, directed by Bennett Miller (Moneyball, Capote) is based on the real lives of Mark and Dave Schultz, Olympic wrestlers who were invited by John Eleuthère du Pont, heir to an unbelievably massive fortune, to train at his sprawling estate, called Foxcatcher. Du Pont’s money comes from violence—his fortune is from gunpowder and chemicals—and it is a horrific, bizarre act of true violence that acts as the movie’s climax. Maybe what is most striking about the crime is how senseless it is. Mark (Channing Tatum) is isolated in every way. The first time we see him, he’s wrestling a dummy; that is how alone this guy is. He lives in an apartment so empty it looks like he’s squatting there. When du Pont (Steve Carell) comes into his life, offering money, attention, patriotic fulfillment, and a chilling kind of companionship, Mark says yes. John du Pont wants to, essentially, be a patron of the U.S. Olympic wrestling team by funding their workouts, providing a housing and training facility, and calling himself a coach. As he points out, the Soviet Union sponsors amateur athletes in a similar manner; why can’t America do the same? Mark is both a get and a means to an end. He’s du Pont’s way of getting at Dave, (Mark Ruffalo), Mark’s charismatic, happily married older brother, whom he finally lures out of his stable life to be “assistant” coach, even though, of course, Dave ends up doing all the real coaching. But upon his arrival, Dave stumps du Pont at every turn. Du Pont just doesn’t know what to do with Dave, who is probably the first man he’s ever met who can’t be bought. The best moment in the movie comes when Dave is called upon to be part of this video celebrating du Pont’s work. When the documentary filmmakers ask Dave to call du Pont “a mentor” on camera, he is gobsmacked and torn. He thinks it’s funny, but he is the only person who sees how funny it is. Is the risk of being the first person to speak truth to du Pont’s power greater than the risk of allowing yourself to be the kind of person who would tell that kind of lie on camera? Yet at this point, I must reveal: I did not like Foxcatcher. It has an 83-percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I am the unpopular opinion in the room, alas. Two of the stars of “Foxcatcher”: Steve Carell, and Steve Carell’s prosthetic nose. CREDIT: Scott Garfield, Sony Pictures Classics There is the small movie within the movie that holds up to close inspection—the gorgeous and gut-wrenching relationship between Mark and Dave—but then there’s the bigger, zoom-out take of a movie that is about class disparity in America that seems to reach for big ideas without quite grasping them. There’s something in the ether here the way that guys who are down on their luck can find themselves at the mercy of rich people who, in that Great Gatsby tradition, “smash up things and creatures and then retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness.” If you’re going back to such well-worn story territory, there has to be a reason for the return. To what end are we watching these lives get smashed? Just for the sake of bearing witness to smashing? The movie is made up almost entirely of atmosphere – which is beautiful, and haunting, and deeply affecting, but also leaves you with nothing solid to hold onto. I felt unmoored the entire time, like too much information was being withheld. Like the story was sacrificed for the sake of ambiance. Dave and Mark are brothers; one is a functional father, the other lives this caveman life and carries all his sadness in his jowls. But… why? Is du Pont supposed to be a stand-in for the moral depravity of the elite, or is he just one sick, broken man with too much money and a mother (Vanessa Redgrave, fittingly channeling a future Olympian with her perpetually unimpressed smirk) who has nothing for him but contempt? Carell plays du Pont as sad and strange and savage. He is completely un-self-aware and, as people who lack self-awareness tend to be, inadvertently hilarious as a result. At one point, du Pont tells Mark that, because they’re “friends” now, Mark shouldn’t call him “Mr. du Pont” anymore. “Most of my good friends call me Eagle. Or Golden Eagle. Or Coach. Or John.” But du Pont is friendless—there isn’t a single person in the film with whom he interacts that isn’t on his payroll, or, as in the case with Dave’s wife and family, on the payroll by proxy—so the whole thing is this depressing lie he tells himself. No one corrects him. Perhaps the more important questions are, why tell this bleak, unsettling story, and why tell it now? Does it speak to something meaningful and urgent and true? A case could be made for a “don’t let the one-percenters wield their power unchecked” takehome. But du Pont is too much of a lone, lost man to be a legitimate stand-in for some greater group of people. It feels like Foxcatcher was dreamed into existence just to give these actors an opportunity to strut their thespian stuff. That’s all well and good and Academy-enticing, but movies need to be made of more than that. What lingers when Foxcatcher is over isn’t the impact of those performances so much as the sadness of the story that made those performances possible. Foxcatcher is two-plus hours that feels like ten, and it is relentlessly bleak nearly all the way through. The post The Brothers Grim: The Bleak Beauty Of ‘Foxcatcher’ appeared first on ThinkProgress. ThinkProgress ift.tt/11jN1xt
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 14:29:10 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015