Foxcatcher
First screened in September 2014 / Most recently screened and reviewed in March 2024
Director: Bennett Miller. Cast: Channing Tatum, Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Michael Hall, Guy Boyd, Brett Rice, Corey Jantzen, Daniel Hilt, Jesse Jantzen. Screenplay: E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman.

 Twitter Capsule: (2014) Solid cast, suffocating direction. Clear, repetitive audience cues. Overblown tragic tenor. Like Nolan doing Quiz Show.

In Brief: (2024) A meat locker of mostly ruined masculinities, serving also as a dossier on class. Stony aesthetic, but I got on board.

VOR: ④  Valuable as a compendium of male-male envies that recognize, nurture, and destroy each other. Nuanced acting mixes with near-documentary elements.


   
Photo © 2014 Sony Pictures Classics / Annapurna Pictures
OOF. Watching this again ten years later, with the advent of President John du Pont in between, is almost too much. So much of American masculinity has become more and more of a murder-suicide death cult in the meantime, sometimes loudly and sometimes quietly, sometimes with bloodspurt and sometimes just internally. It was always clear what Foxcatcher was about, but boy does its vantage point just paralyze your body, capture your, attention, elicit your despondent belief as you watch.

I get why my most important reservation about Foxcatcher at the time was the sheer uniformity of tone and clarity of message. There are cutaways and underlines within the otherwise muscular, supremely confident montage that aren't strictly necessary, and the overall perma-pall can be even more suffocating than the film may intend. But Foxcatcher is also an astonishingly lucid take on the dynamics circulating among these men (and many others like them), and it offers that perspective without reducing these men's individual mysteries or extrapolating too, too broadly from this resonant but still quite peculiar scenario.

I'd forgotten that Greig Fraser shot this movie, but it's an early, wintry peak in his strength-to-strength career. Paul Hsu's sound design is also a wonder, as reverberantly empty as a mausoleum much of the time, but savvy and stunning with some of its nervier or more abstract choices. Ruffalo and Carell remain, for me, tip-top performances from a pretty strong year, and Tatum holds down his side of the deal better than I recalled; I also didn't remember that you barely hear a word from Mark in the movie's second half. The production design by regular Coen Brothers accomplice Jess Gonchor, the score's elegant mixture of dolorous minimalisms by different composers, the way Kasia Walicka Maimone's costumes play with the fluctuating potency and puniness of different characters, and the way her team uniforms still carry an eerie charge even after two hours of near-constant exposure, the way Vanessa Redgrave and Sienna Miller each present a tangible character and an almanac of backstory in their brief appearances... there's quite a lot to admire here. And it's just so sad! And as unsettling as it is sad. Grade: B+

(in September 2014: B–)
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Director: Bennett Miller
Best Actor: Steve Carell
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo
Best Original Screenplay: E. May Frye and Dan Futterman
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Bill Corso and Dennis Liddiard

Golden Globe Nominations:
Best Picture (Drama)
Best Actor (Drama): Steve Carell
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo

Other Awards:
Cannes Film Festival: Best Director
Independent Spirit Awards: Special Achievement Award
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