Foxcatcher is only Bennett Miller’s third feature film, but he should already be considered in the highest tier of American directors. Despite working with vastly different source material, Foxcatcher shows some of the same traits that allowed Capote and Moneyball to succeed; a sense of silence weighing down with import and menace, charged psychological currents coursing through striving men, and an understanding of the desperation at the heart of the American dream.
In a very broad manner, Foxcatcher resembles Capote in reverse. Instead of an upper-crust aesthete descending on a lower-class community he little understands, a working class man is thrust into an estate of entrenched wealth and power he can barely conceive. Instead of a murder at the beginning, there’s one at the end. The film centers on three men and the poisonous desires between them. At the story’s onset, brothers Mark (Channing Tatum) and Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) are already winners of Olympic Gold. Mark, the younger, is still striving for World Championships and the next Olympic Games and has little in his life besides wrestling, while Dave is happily married, with young children. Dave essentially raised Mark amidst parental neglect and is his primary father figure, yet Mark resents how much of his own success is attributed to Dave. Out of the blue, Mark is contacted by one of America’s wealthiest men, John du Pont (Steve Carell), who offers to install him on his own estate where Mark will have state of the art training facilities and his every need met. John claims to be motivated by a love of wrestling and patriotism. Dave is invited too, but resists uprooting his family.
By transporting him into a world of wealth and pledging his support, John gives Mark the validation he feels he deserves. Dave asks Mark, “What is he (du Pont) getting out of this?” and the sinister answer only becomes clear as the film moves to its tragic conclusion. Sheltered from his wealth from any real need or consequences, du Pont grasps at hobbies and passions to bolster his sense of accomplishment – writing books on bird-watching, stamp collecting, and most of all, fashioning himself a sportsman. Despite knowing little to nothing about wrestling, John is determined to be the coach of the USA team and plays the part to the hilt. He constantly wears “Team Foxcatcher” clothing (embroidered with his self-coined nickname, Golden Eagle), he teaches the wrestlers elementary moves they already know, competes in senior tournaments (which he wins after his assistant pays off the competition), and in the delusional coup de grace, he commissions a documentary on himself as the heroic coach of the team.
But for all of these efforts to cultivate his image to the public, he seems even more intoxicated by the role he can play in Mark’s life. Mark is in many ways an empty vessel and finds purpose in playing the surrogate son to du Pont, who is working out is own filial issues with his dismissive mother, hauntingly portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave. In a public speech that John helped him prepare, Mark says “All my life, I’ve been searching for a father and now I’ve found one, in the Golden Eagle of America, John du Pont.”
These close relations soon sour, however, as Mark neglects his training in favor of John’s leisure life of cocaine and alcohol in the morning. Mark begins to resent John’s controlling nature and John, who wants more than anything to win (by proxy) Olympic gold, senses that Mark isn’t up to the task and finally persuades Dave to join the team. Dave is a seasoned leader who actually knows wrestling and the team looks to him as the real coach, even as he tries to handle John delicately for the good of his career and family. Out of the three, Dave is the only one who is remotely grounded and emotionally healthy. Yet as John’s dreams and surrogate son slip away from him, it’s Dave who he comes to blame.
The film is full of compelling performances. Tatum shines as an inarticulate man with vast desires who portrays his emotions physically and Carell turns in a chilling performance as a remote man, unknowable and tortured with insecurity. Beautifully shot, the film turns du Pont’s Pennsylvania estate into a gothic enclave where wealth enables the terrible.
Foxcatcher is a film about desire denied and how poisonous that can be, especially to a man whose wealth has allowed him almost everything. It’s fittingly tragic that Dave, happy and decent, should pay the price. Miller shows the drastic need that exists in the hearts of men, even men who have won gold or been born into dynastic wealth. Foxcatcher takes the unlikely subject of wrestling and turns it into a masterfully told tale of the dark side of American wealth and ambition.
