Foxcatcher (2014)

I've seen Steve Carell in semi-serious films before, most notably Little Miss Sunshine and The Big Short. This is my first time seeing him in something not remotely humorous. Between this, the character's mental issues, and the basis on a real person, I can only assume that he was trying for an Oscar. He did get a nod, but Eddie Redmayne had it in the bag that year.

Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) and his slightly older brother, Dave (Mark Ruffalo), already have Olympic gold medals for freestyle wrestling by the start of the story in 1986. Out of the blue, Mark is invited to Foxcatcher Farm in Pennsylvania to join the new Team Foxcatcher under wealthy heir John E. du Pont (Carell) and hopefully win the World Championship. He accepts. Dave is less keen on coming, because he has a wife and kids with a life elsewhere, but John grows to want him at any price, partly because he's reputedly the better wrestler and partly because the team doesn't take practice as seriously as John wants. It seems that the three of them can hardly get along all at the same time, and especially with John's emotional issues, things will get ugly.

If I hadn't read the Netflix jacket, I wouldn't have guessed that John was a paranoid schizophrenic. Sure, he's eccentric and sometimes violently unhinged, but he doesn't indicate any obvious delusions. I could believe he was just a cocaine addict (who had the nerve to pressure Mark into it) with low social skills. Well, the filmmakers deliberately toned down John's behavior from reality. An apparent point of the film is to formulate a gradual process that led to his claim to infamy, so it's not enough to say that he's not all there.

According to the real Mark Schultz, who wrote the book that became a source for the movie, the most egregious liberties taken pertain to personalities and relationships. In particular, he got sore about a perceived homoerotic undercurrent in how fictional John treated fictional Mark. He cooled down later and professed to liking the overall result, perhaps realizing that director Bennett Miller and his writers, in their quest for mythmaking, wanted to make John look all the less appropriate. I hadn't picked up on any unambiguous gayness, but it does get disturbing.

Foxcatcher is big on showing and not telling. Or at least not telling. I had to think hard about why characters do what they do -- perhaps Mark even more so than John. I mean, what's his excuse? Just a brawny fool? I'll give the actors credit for portraying complex feelings, but I can appreciate them only so much without relating.

As you might have surmised, this is not your usual sports flick. I doubt you could enjoy it very well if you had your heart set on one. What's more, it has a remarkably slow pace, not least when John has a monologue. Unlike golf or baseball, wrestling is not a sport for the patient, so who exactly is the target audience here?

I might have liked Foxcatcher better if I had gone in with a better idea of the historical events. Knowing how it ends makes a big difference in evaluating what comes before. Still, I'll refrain from telling you directly. Look up John E. du Pont if you want a quick answer.

Sorry, Bennett. This is not the follow-up to Capote and Moneyball I was looking for. Hope you do better next time. Unfortunately, you haven't directed anything since, and your only announced future project is yet another version of A Christmas Carol, which really needs to be given a rest.