Foxcatcher is already earning Oscar talk out of Cannes, which is no surprise considering Tatum’s and Carell’s expectation-defying performances.
Steve Carell and Channing Tatum in Foxcatcher
Scott Garfield, Fair Hill/Sony Pictures Classics
May is eye-poppingly early to begin seriously talking about awards season. But there's no arguing that Foxcatcher, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, is going to attract a lot of Oscar talk.
The film, directed by Bennett Miller (Moneyball) and penned by his Capote screenwriter Dan Futterman and E. Max Frye (Band of Brothers), is based on a tragic true story about how multimillionaire and paranoid schizophrenic John du Pont sponsored Olympic wrestlers and brothers Mark and Dave Schultz, only to end up murdering the latter sibling. It features two expectation-challenging turns from stars Channing Tatum as Mark and the usually comedic Carell, who's nearly unrecognizable in a prosthetic nose as the unstable du Pont.
But Foxcatcher, which will be released by Sony Pictures Classics on Nov. 14, is more than Oscar bait. It's a subdued, fascinating, and darkly American drama about talent, money, and power. Its characters talk about patriotism, morals, and family, but are entangled in relationships that are fundamentally and uncomfortably transactional. Du Pont, the heir to his family's fortune who's living on the sprawling Pennsylvania estate of the title, is serving as a patron of a sport with a long history and little money behind it — but he's also buying himself a stable of athletic young men to be his friends and to call him a coach and mentor, despite his lack of experience.
Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo in Foxcatcher
Scott Garfield, Fair Hill/Sony Pictures Classics
As du Pont, Carell carefully walks a line between awkward and unbalanced, playing a character who can be funny, but who's devoid of any sense of humor or self-awareness — the type of person who doesn't realize he's never not gotten what he wants, even when it comes to people. On an apparently recent whim, he plucks up Mark from a routine of impoverished training and offers him lavish resources. Tatum's role is more central and less showy than Carell's, but he's brutishly heartbreaking as the younger sibling of the better-known, more socially adept Dave (Mark Ruffalo), who has a wife, children, and a life of his own. Muscly and inarticulate, Mark's world revolves around only wrestling, and, for a while, du Pont seems to be offering not just financial freedom, but actual companionship and connection for the apparently friendless athlete.
It obviously doesn't end well — but Miller's portrayal of the story of du Pont and the Schultz brothers is an understated but weighty tragedy about lonely men and the parallel tracks of money and skill. One can't equal the other, but the former certainly allows you more of a luxury to try.
David Cronenberg's Cannes entry Maps to the Stars is also a film about the business of relationships, only its breed of celebrity is far less specialized and far more readily monetized than anything you could find in amateur wrestling. It feels like a showbiz-centric sibling to the director's last film, 2012's Cosmopolis, which took on the world of finance — and both feature Robert Pattinson in a limo, only this time around, he's just the driver.
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