‘Foxcatcher’ a sordid tale told at arm’s length

“Foxcatcher” has an incredibly dramatic and disturbing true story to tell and yet it does so in a very even-keeled way. No heightened melodrama, no cheap histrionics – just a quiet and deliberate laying out of the events, more or less as they happened over the course of a couple years, events that culminated in a shocking tragedy.

“Foxcatcher” is about a very rich but socially awkward man named John DuPont, who uses his wealth to ingratiate himself with the U.S. Wrestling team in the 1980’s. He pours vast sums of money into founding a national wrestling program and building a huge training complex on his own property, a property he dubs Foxcatcher Farms. His first big recruit was Mark Schultz, already an Olympic Gold medal-winning wrestler.

“Do you have any idea who I am? Some rich guy calls you on the phone. I wanted to speak to you about what you hope to achieve. What do you hope to achieve, Mark?” says Steve Carell as Dupont, calling Channing Tatum, who plays Schultz.

The two characters are both psychologically needy. DuPont seeks a kind of public validation – despite his vast wealth, no one takes him seriously, especially his mother. And Schultz adopts DuPont as a kind of father figure who will spur him on to greatness. When the two of them lure Shultz’s older brother to join Team Foxcatcher, all signs point to a grand success. Instead, things go terribly wrong.

I greatly admire the restraint director Bennett Miller exerts over the material, but in the end, I found myself asking whether the effort was worth it. “Foxcatcher” does a great job depicting what happens but can’t shed much light, if any, on why what happens, happens. It’s a sordid tale told at arm’s length, period. So while I can appreciate the film’s artistry, I question its emotional integrity.

One last thing – about Steve Carell’s prosthetic nose. I get it that the real John DuPont had a prominent nose, but Carell’s fake nose is so distracting that it gets in the way of his performance. DuPont was such an odd duck that I’m sure Carell had plenty of material to work with, without sticking him with a ridiculous-looking nose. Making matters worse, the real John DuPont’s nose was not even that disorienting.