Bennett Miller’s wrestling drama makes money and dependence feel quietly frightening, with Channing Tatum the most affecting of its three leads. The solemn pace sometimes strains our patience, but the performances make it worth staying.
Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher is a strong, unsettling drama with a stubbornly slow pace. It takes the competitive world of Olympic wrestling and makes the attention of a wealthy man feel more worrying than anything that happens in a match. John du Pont’s involvement with Mark Schultz and David Schultz gives the film a way to examine who gets to claim credit for other people’s effort. Anyone expecting the reassurance of an underdog sports story should adjust that expectation before settling in.
Channing Tatum makes Mark Schultz’s need for recognition painfully apparent. His performance gives the wrestler’s strength something vulnerable underneath it, and the character’s ambition never seems safely separate from his loneliness. Mark Ruffalo, as David Schultz, brings enough ordinary human ease to make that loneliness more noticeable. We found the brothers’ scenes unexpectedly moving. Their convincing closeness gives us something to care about beyond the grim business of watching a rich man acquire influence.
Steve Carell makes John du Pont difficult company even when he has our full attention. The physical transformation is striking, though the more troubling achievement is the sense of someone who expects his importance to be accepted without question. Wealth allows that expectation to persist, and Steve Carell lets the neediness show through the authority. We can recognise the appetite for approval without feeling that the film has explained everything about him. That uncertainty is effective for a while.
Greig Fraser’s cinematography gives this world a cold, unwelcoming look, while Jess Gonchor’s production design makes the differences in status legible. The money never makes the surroundings seem inviting. Rob Simonsen’s music suits the prevailing unease, though the film’s silences are what stay with us. These choices work together, although the consistency can become wearing: the film offers little relief from its own gravity. The atmosphere is oppressive well before the story needs to become a conventional thriller.
The editing by Stuart Levy, Conor O’Neill and Jay Cassidy gives the performances time to develop, and Bennett Miller makes patient use of long takes. We get to notice how the men respond to one another, which matters in a story where so much depends on approval. At 134 minutes, however, the film sometimes keeps us waiting after the discomfort has registered. There are stretches when the cast has made a relationship clear and the film continues to contemplate it.
The screenplay, co-written by Dan Futterman, is alert to the humiliation that can accompany accepting help. Its account of John du Pont is harder to settle with, because his disturbing behaviour sometimes seems to be offered as explanation enough. We wanted a clearer sense of how he understands the relationship. Still, the film is right to take his money seriously as a practical source of power. These men do not enter their dealings on equal terms.
The reward for staying with it is the acting, particularly the way Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo make brotherhood feel lived in. Their work prevents the film’s ideas about wealth and wounded national pride from swallowing the people involved. We recommend it to anyone prepared for a sports drama with little interest in encouragement. Choose it for an evening when everyone on the sofa has agreed that cheering up can wait.
