by Douglas Messerli
E.
Max Frye and Dan Futterman (screenplay), Bennett Miller (director) Foxcatcher / 2014
One
might begin any discussion about Bennett Miller’s new film, Foxcatcher, by noting the importance of
its title. Foxcatcher is the name of the du Pont estate, ruled over for most of
this film, by John du Pont’s (Steve Carrell) patrician mother, Jean (Vanessa
Redgrave), presumably an attempt to describe the success of her numerous
hunting parties to catch the wily prey. I once had a friend in Washington, D.C.,
Mary Swift, who having participated in fox hunts (perhaps even in the ones
arranged by Jean du Pont), dismissed any discussion about the poor beasts
chased by hounds and adults upon horseback by arguing that in the vast majority
of such hunts, the foxes always escaped. Whether or not that is the truth, the
reality of Foxcatcher was clearly asserted in the claim of the name itself: du
Pont’s foxes were always captured or destroyed, an important metaphor for the
fact that, at least in the du Pont sensibility, even the cleverest of animals
could not escape their capture and even torture. And the fact that John,
although he claimed to hate his mother’s love of horse flesh, still chose to
put his wrestling enterprises under the umbrella of his estate’s moniker,
immediately suggests that there is something sinister about the place.
The “little kit” which John choses to chase, particularly the Olympic gold medal-winning Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), could hardly be described, moreover, as a “fox.” Having lived a nearly homeless life on the move with his elder, fatherly brother, Dave (Mark Ruffalo)—a man who is far more savvy and grounded in family life with his wife and two beloved children—Mark is a winner on the verge of becoming a loser, even before meeting up with du Pont. Isolated from others of the wrestling circuit and separated even from his caring brother in his lonely struggle to prepare for the upcoming World Wrestling Championship and, later, the Olympic trials, Mark is financially strapped, surviving in a small apartment where he nightly retires on a ramen-based diet, records, and television. He is a loner, and without his brother would be utterly lost.
Out of the blue, he receives a call from
du Pont, inviting him to a meeting. While most of us would be utterly startled
by such an invitation, Mark is completely clueless, not having the foggiest
notion that he is about to meet with one of the wealthiest Americans alive. As
their first conversation reveals, Dave not only is clueless about du Pont, but
about nearly everything going on in the world around him. His focus, as the
director reveals in one of the very first sequences of the film, is on how to
bring down the figure who stands before him, even if it is only a robotic dummy
substituting for human flesh. One has the feeling that, except for his brother,
du Pont is one of the few human beings with whom Mark has even had a
conversation:
du
pont: Do you have any idea why I asked you to come here
today?
mark
schultz: No.
du
pont: No? Well, Mark, do you have—do you have any idea
who I am?
schultz:
No.
du
pont: Some rich guy calls you on the phone. I want Mark Schultz
to come visit
me. Well, I’m a—I’m a wrestling coach. And
I have a deep
love for the sport of wrestling. I wanted to
speak to you
about your future, about what you hope to
achieve. What do you hope to
achieve, Mark?
schultz:
I want to be the best in the world. I want to go to World’s
and win gold. I
want to go to the ’88 Olympics in Seoul
and win gold.
du
pont: Good. I’m proud of you.
Screenwriters Frye’s and Futterman’s
careful dialogue says it all. The idea that the wealthy du Pont is actually a
“wrestling coach” is something, suggested by his pause, that even he is a bit
uncomfortable with, having simply conferred upon himself another major
avocation (he is a kind of hobbyist, a
“ornithologist, philanthropist, philatelist,” as he later forces Schultz to
memorize). Schultz’s restated goals “to win gold” reveals the utter simplicity
of his ideals and the lack of complexity in which thinks and expresses himself.
And du Pont’s paternalistic approval of his goals merely reveals his attitude
towards what we soon discern is his newest victim.
Although Miller’s movie makes no mention
of it, du Pont had already been accused by a Villanova college wrestler of
sexual harassment.* It is clear that this very strange man (particularly as
Carrell plays him), chooses every word, perhaps even subconsciously, not only
to aggrandize his own role, but curry favor with his young new charge, whom
Bennett and his writers soon reveal he is about to attempt to transform from a
lumpen, muscle-bound, dough-boy into a kind of male Pygmalion, a figure who he might
create as someone from whom he might receive love.
Some critics, most notably Richard Brody
in The New Yorker, argue that the
problem with Foxcatcher is that once
this situation is set up by the circumstances, the director can never bring
himself to focus on the animus of du Pont’s motives or, more particularly,
seldom represents anything that might reveal the implications of the
psychological relationship between the two figures, refusing to fully explore
the links between “sex and violence.”
I argue, however, that Bennett and his writers
very much center their work of just those issues, but simply refuse to make
them literal. In part, we never become witness to the actual dynamics between
the two men because these individual are both tortured beings. Although
outwardly deferential almost to the point of slavishness, inside Mark is a
volcano ready to explode. If he truly loves his brother, he is also resentful
of and severely envious of him. His ability to win depends a great deal his
lack of empathy with other human beings. But it is also clear that if he cannot
feel, it is because he has been seldom given the opportunity to experience and
express such emotions with anyone except for his brother.
If du Pont has a larger vocabulary, we
quickly recognize, it was something he has simply been taught in the attempts
to make him presentable as the wealthy scion of a noted family. Particularly in
the way Carrell plays him, du Pont’s little pronunciamentos, his appalling
rightist political viewpoints, and his behavioral tics have been carefully
taught. If he would be a creator of Mark’s personality, he, himself, has been
just such a figure for his mother and her associates
. There is hardly anything “personal” about
him—except for his preference for human flesh over horseflesh, which may have
arisen as much for his desire for simple friendship as out of a sexual desire.
He has chosen wrestling, obviously, to be able to touch and grope other human
beings because, much like Schultz, he has seldom had the opportunity to touch
anyone either in the flesh or through the intellect, his mother, as he
discovers as a child, even paying for a servant boy to be his only friend. The
fact that he needs to lay his hands
upon other men is so hidden in his psyche that it has become confused with not
only friendship but with his paternalistic desires. He is not only still a boy
without a friend, but is a would-be lover without someone to love, a father
without a son—all roles being completely intertwined in his imagination.
I agree with Brody, accordingly, that the
real issues of this film are sex and violence, as opposed to what several
critics have felt are issues of power and wealth. Certainly power and wealth
make it far easier for this man to obtain what he desires, but it is matters of
the heart, not the pocketbook that motivates him at all times. If he can easily
purchase a military tank, and even, in a pique of anger, procure a gun to mount
atop it, it is far more difficult, Bennett makes clear, to carve out another
human being who is willing to become friend, lover and son. It involves a very
subtle process of intimidation, indoctrination, and chance. One wrong step, and
the creation will crumble into pieces, as we soon discover.
Carefully, slyly, a bit like a fox, he is
able to manipulate his young charge, changing the young man from a healthy
teetotaler to a beer-drinking, cocaine-smoking hunk, even forcing a new tuft-tinted
hairdo upon the kid. Schultz’s hidden envy about his brother is given voice
through du Pont’s pronouncements. From the beginning, du Pont is all too ready
to touch and feel his object of affection with the usual shoulder, back, and
ass pats that occur between thousands of coaches and their players. And
gradually, by forcing the young man to teach him wrestling techniques to that
he might, himself, compete in the over 50 category of wrestling, he even is
able to ritually touch and grope his object of love.
Bennett has already shown us just how
erotic wrestling is in a long scene in which the brothers spar, combining the standard,
almost kabuki-like positions of wrestling maneuvers with the loving familial gestures
that include the embracement of heads, gentle strokes, and tender interlocking.
If the scenes in which du Pont and Schultz never go that far, it is only
because du Pont resists the expressive erotic both for fear of its consequences
and what he might force him to admit about his own clearly closeted life.
Besides, as we know from historical events, he had already gotten in to trouble
for actually expressing such emotions.
That does not mean that Bennett’s movie
does not titillate the viewer enough to make it clear what is really going on.
The fact that du Pont has now—with apparent willingness—transformed his young
Pygmalion into a personal barber, speaks volumes. And, for his part, Schultz is
now convinced that du Pont is his personal mentor, the term the elder uses as a
code word for “father.” But just as the two grow closer and closer, we fear
that in his being pulled away from the only thing upon which his life is truly
focused, wrestling, Schultz will erupt into violence. Without warning, it is du
Pont who becomes irrational. Perhaps recognizing that, in his utter innocence
and stupidity, Mark Schultz will never be able to transition into the object of
his desire, he lashes out against him both verbally and physically, perhaps
realizing that he might have been better off if he could have won over the more
affable Dave that his withdrawn sibling.
As Mark has argued throughout, however, Dave
is untouchable, a man more interested in honor and family than in money or the
many personal perks involved with du Pont’s patronage. It is rather shocking,
accordingly, when du Pont actually does come back to Foxcatcher with Dave and
his entire family in hand. In his mind, clearly, he has once more caught his
personal fox, a true wrestling coach who will stand in for his inadequacies by
training Mark and others to win the gold, and, just possibly, to perform a few
other roles on the side.
True to his word, as always, Dave does
enact his wrestling duties well, training the strange loners du Pont has
gathered upon his estate as well as returning some sense of order to his now
slightly bitter and silent brother’s life. Du Pont, however, wants his complete
time, chastising Dave who on a Sunday is discovered celebrating with his
family. And, even more importantly, when Dave is asked to help in a promotional
film celebrating du Pont’s contributions, he suddenly finds himself without
words to describe what it is precisely, other than money, that du Pont is
providing. When the film director suggests he talk about du Pont’s role as a
“mentor,” Dave becomes utterly speechless. What wisdom is he imparting, and to
whom, we are forced to ask?
Denied
the possibility of touching or groping Dave, and now unable to even approach
the sulking and increasingly self-destructive Mark, du Pont, nonetheless, still
attempts to impress his mother with his skill and knowledge, particularly when,
despite almost throwing the match, Mark squeaks by in another event. The foxes
he has caught, however, are of no interest to her; his obvious lust of human
flesh is, as she puts it, “low,” an activity she describes as a low-brow sport
as opposed to her high-brow play of horses and hounds. The ridiculousness of
her evaluations, as well as John’s desperate attempts to gain her approval
merely point up the absurd world within which both have cocooned themselves.
Theirs is a life not only without normality but is highly perverted.
But just as horribly, du Pont has now
perverted Mark Schultz’s love his brother, his feelings for his sport, and,
most importantly, his sense of himself. If his goals had been limited, they
were once real goals; now they serve merely as a pre-determined mode of
operation whose rules Mark can longer obey. He turns even against his own body,
gorging on deserts and other food, which results, predictably, with his failure
on the mat. He is no longer a “real” wrestler, but like the violent performers
the wrestlers have mocked on TV, a “fake.” He leaves the estate as a fox
already caught and tortured, emotionally dead.
Although Dave now realizes that something is
rotten in Pennsylvania, given his buoyant sense of survival he cannot even
imagine the simmering madness he is about to face. Untouchable, he represents
to the now failed du Pont, everything he has lost throughout his life time and
again. Dave is no friend, no lover, no son, not even a man who might possibly
accept his consul. He is no one, a fox to be destroyed by the hounds of du Pont’s
inbred hate. Du Pont’s murder of whom he now perceives as merely a hired-hand,
more closely represents the actions of an utterly disappointed child than those
of a plotting and dispirited adult. Like a lover refused before he has even
been to express his desires, he blows up this new pillar of marble before he
has had a chance to carve out a single scratch.
*See
“A Life in Pieces: For du Pont Heir, Question was Control,” in The New York Times, February 4, 1996.
Los Angles,
November 24, 2014
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