Review

Poor little rich boy

Foxcatcher a cautionary tale about unchecked privilege

John Eleuthere du Pont (Steve Carell) is the chief patron of the U.S. Olympic wrestling team in Bennett Miller’s acid critique of capitalism and male bonding, Foxcatcher.
John Eleuthere du Pont (Steve Carell) is the chief patron of the U.S. Olympic wrestling team in Bennett Miller’s acid critique of capitalism and male bonding, Foxcatcher.

Americans tend to worship rich people.

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Mark (Channing Tatum) and Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) are brothers and Olympic gold medalists who find themselves sucked into the orbit of a creepy philanthropist in Foxcatcher.

It doesn't really matter how they got rich, whether they were born that way or made it themselves. Wealth insulates and cushions; it might not buy you love but it will buy you cocaine and acquiescence and a softer brand of justice.

Foxcatcher

89 Cast: Channing Tatum, Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Anthony Michael Hall, Vanessa Redgrave, Guy Boyd, Brett Rice

Director: Bennett Miller

Rating: R, for some drug use and a scene of violence

Running time: 129 minutes

Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher is the story of an ugly little princeling whose only real talent was for buying things and people. John Eleuthere du Pont (played here by Steve Carell through a prosthetic nose and a fog of misapprehension and disconnection from reality that lends him the appearance of a puzzled sand shark) was the sort of unfortunate fatherless boy who found it impossible to make friends. But he was also a Du Pont, an heir to an enormous fortune, and so his mother (Vanessa Redgrave) bought him one.

As played by Carell, du Pont is an impossibly sad figure, a man so self-unaware that he insists on calling himself -- and suborning others to call him -- the "Golden Eagle of America." He gives away a lot of money but you can't exactly call it philanthropy, for there are always strings attached. He funds local police SWAT teams, so they let him ride around with them, carrying a gun and badge. And because amateur sports in this country is always on the make for sponsors, USA Wrestling allows him to name himself head coach and emblazon his name on Olympic uniforms. Du Pont is a dilettante, but a dilettante with money, so his idiocy can be regarded as useful. Perhaps he is as much victim as shark.

If Miller's previous feature Moneyball could be read as an exalting triumph of the nerds story, Revenge on the Nerd might work as an alternate title to the present film.

But while Carell disappears into his role, breathing heavily behind an affectless mask, the real protagonist of Foxcatcher is Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), an Olympic champion wrestler and little brother who comes to live with du Pont on his sprawling Pennsylvania estate to train for the 1988 Seoul Olympics and to strut shirtlessly around the grounds, presumably for the homoerotic gratification of the closed-off du Pont. (While the real-life Mark Schultz is apparently unhappy about the way his relationship with du Pont is portrayed in the film, there's no suggestion of any sort of physical relationship between Schultz and du Pont more explicit than some sweaty wrestling sessions.)

Tatum, generally regarded as a dramatic lightweight, is mesmerizing as the petulant and sorrowful Mark, an inarticulate and wounded man-child seemingly unconvinced of the authenticity of his accomplishment. Despite the gold medal he brought home from the '84 summer games -- which allows him the opportunity to address grade school assemblies and subsist on fast food and ramen noodles -- Mark is perpetually in the shadow of his older brother, gregarious Dave (Mark Ruffalo), who, while only arguably a more accomplished wrestler (he also won a gold medal in '84), is by far the more confident and rooted adult.

While the brothers train together and seem close -- an early scene of them wrestling establishes the immutable dynamic between them -- Dave has established himself in suburbia with wife Nancy (Sienna Miller, who coincidentally also plays the wife of the similarly fated lead character in American Sniper, which opens today) and family and even the moral wherewithal to resist, at least for a while, du Pont's attempts to lure him to join Team Foxcatcher and live and train on du Pont's estate.

Hungry for validation and eager to escape his brother's shadow, Mark is initially taken in by du Pont's pompous appeals to his patriotism and apparent generosity (with his drugs as well as his money), though he sulks when he begins to suspect that the millionaire is only using him to try to lure his brother into his fold.

Obviously, du Pont is completely incompetent as a wrestling coach, but his patronage is such that world-class athletes indulge and enable his private fantasy camps. While the film does not go deeply into du Pont's athletic history -- he attempted but failed to qualify for the 1968 team as a modern pentathlete (an event that one could conceivably buy one's way into; it's composed of fencing, freestyle swimming, show jumping, pistol shooting and cross-country running) -- there's little doubt that he's attempting to vicariously experience the thrill of victory. So an invented scene, in which du Pont wins an obviously rigged senior wrestling tournament, seems like overkill.

But for the most part, the movie is a slow-burning model of restraint. The feeling that builds throughout is less suspense than dread, an awful foreboding that a lot of people are going to find unpleasant. (How you receive the film depends largely on your tolerance for heartbreak. No one escapes intact.)

It is about more than the way money corrupts and warps -- the moral compromises inherent in accepting other people's support. It's also a critique of hollow patriotism, with periodic chants of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" taking on an increasingly rote and empty timbre, until it's reduced to reflexive cheerleading at a mixed martial arts match.

It's about the ways men without women accommodate one another -- the way they literally lean on one another and the way alliances shift and dissipate as favors are proffered and withheld. Ultimately, it's a haunting fable of unchecked privilege, inhabited by lonely destructive men who can't quite complete each other.

Email:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

www.blooddirtangels.com

MovieStyle on 01/16/2015

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