Foxcatcher is as
chilly and stately as a true crime sports movie can be. Director Bennett
Miller’s Capote and Moneyball similarly took true stories
and scraped away the majesty of urban legend until the cold hard facts
remained, animated by performances that let us see where the real peoples’
personalities left spaces for exaggeration. Here, he returns to the well of
composed, minimalist character portraits, drawing up only empty insight in his
overdetermined, lugubriously paced dirge. I was reminded of James Agee calling
the work of studio journeyman William Dieterle “a high-polished mélange of
heavy “touches” and “intelligent” performances.” Foxcatcher is a film calibrated away from all the points on which the
critical community often dings based-on-true-story prestige pictures. It’s stripped
of all sentimentality, more affectless than subtle, patient to the point of
rigorous slowness. It’s convinced of its intelligence, heavy, and devoid of
life.
Screenwriters E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman take the story
of the United States Olympic Wrestling Team in the 1980s and smartly structure
it into a narrative built out of scenes in which men jostle for control of
situations. We meet a pair of wrestling brothers, both medalists, an older
brother (Mark Ruffalo) set in his ways, and a younger brother (Channing Tatum)
beginning to strain under his shadow. Tatum gets an offer from eccentric
billionaire John du Pont (Steve Carell) to train on his estate. The rich man
sees an opportunity to bankroll the country’s Olympic wrestling dreams as a way
to achieve a sense of fulfillment in his life of empty, lonely wealth.
An awkward man desperate for human connection, Du Pont is
played by Carell, behind an obvious prosthetic schnoz, as a creepier and more
dangerous version of Michael Scott, his best scenes coming from a similar space
of needy self-delusion. There’s sympathy in the dumb looks that usually
charming Tatum provides, while Ruffalo gives the older brother gentle smarts that
can’t outthink the financial power Du Pont uses to wrest control. Codependent
relationships abound as training for the Olympics becomes a battleground on
which these three men fight for a feeling of importance and camaraderie.
Despite testy differences, the brothers love each other. It’s never clear if
their creepy benefactor could even communicate with another human being without
paying for their time and interest. But all of them here are less real people,
more icy placeholders for ideas of masculinity and capital.
Miller frames several scenes against the backdrop of an
American flag, and has characters give long speeches about patriotism and
respect, pushing down on intended thematic concerns with a heavy hand. There
are maybe five minutes of provocative insight and roughly an hour’s worth of
compelling narrative throughout Foxcatcher’s
endless 130 minutes. It strikes one quiet sour note over and over, devoid of
flavor and animating spirit. Smart actors flounder in scenes swollen with dead
air, a kind of studied portent that’s neither revealing nor instructive. It’s
just empty. This is a movie that gives slow cinema a bad name. Time crawls to a
standstill, scenes tiresomely grinding through repetitive macho crisises, dim
figures burbling serious-minded nothings.
No comments:
Post a Comment