Review of Foxcatcher (2014) by Jason T — 12 Mar 2015

It makes sense that the man who made Moneyball and Capote would combine both sports and murder to give us not only the best work of his career, but the best work from each of its three main actors. Foxcatcher is a haunting meditation on fame, the lust for glory and the crushing quest for respect in the eyes of others. The true story of John Du Pont's obsession with wrestling and the two young men caught in his web of wealthy madness, the film lets story take a back seat to somber character study, allowing the viewer to uncomfortably drift and stew in the dark, dank world of the Foxcatcher Estates, the sprawling Xanadu-esque property of the Du Pont family, including John and his cold, bitter mother, on whom he depends for affection and approval so greatly as to almost be the dark mirror image of Buster Bluth.

Haunting, stoic and almost inhuman, Steve Carrell's performance as Du Pont is one for the ages, leaving the viewer unsettled for hours after the credits role, and his interplay with Channing Tatum as an Olympian living both in squalor and in the shadow of his well-adjusted brother is more spine-chillingly disquieting than any comic book villain brought to the screen. Its grim, midnight blue visual tone and simplistic cinematography help craft this almost Lovecraftian environ into which Ruffalo's character is unwillingly dragged by his brother at the behest of the egomaniacal Du Pont, and its Ruffalo's ever-charming demeanor that feels so incongruous with all the rest of Du Pont's world that a sense of dread lingers like thick smoke in the air of the movie house, circling like vultures waiting for the brilliantly anti-climactic climax, the undignified final act of the mad king of the chemical empire that you anticipate from the first frame of the film (its a fairly well-known true story, after all) and yet still cringe when it occurs and hope perhaps that a miracle may occur. Its stirring, disturbing, and perfectly played, a masterwork of stagnant dread and mingling egos, forever entangled in that bastion of masculine identity known as sport.