Foxcatcher (2014)
Director: Bennett Miller
Entertainment grade: B–
History grade: C
Multimillionaire John Eleuthère du Pont sponsored swimming, track and modern pentathlon. In the 1980s and 90s, he hosted the US wrestling team at his Foxcatcher farm in Pennsylvania.
People
It’s 1987, and Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is down on his luck. When creepy chemical company heir John du Pont (Steve Carell, with a fake nose) offers him a hefty salary and a luxurious home to train at Foxcatcher farm, he goes for it. In real life, Schultz was more wary of du Pont than he seems to be in the film. At first he rented an apartment rather than living on du Pont’s estate. His initial job was offsite as a coach at Villanova University.
Relationships
“I have a deep love of the sport of wrestling,” du Pont tells Schultz, suggestively. Foxcatcher is basically a horror movie, with a superrich and super-weird gay man as the monster. Du Pont’s pressure on Schultz gradually builds: he gives him words to read aloud in public; he gives him cocaine; du Pont has them wrestle together in private. This last scene includes a closeup of Schultz’s face as du Pont has him pinned down on the mat, and it implies a sexual element to their relationship. Afterwards, Schultz bleaches his hair, gets into drink and drugs, and appears to consent, for a while, to a more intimate physical relationship. The real Mark Schultz, who wrote a book about the same events, has admitted he did drugs before he met du Pont, and stated that they got high together on only two or three occasions.
Sexuality
The real Schultz doesn’t seem to have appreciated the movie’s implication that his relationship with du Pont had a sexual edge. He wrote and then deleted a series of tweets slamming director Bennett Miller for “disrespect”, calling him “scum” and reviewing the film in stark terms: “Everything I’ve ever said positive about the movie I take back. I hate it. i hate it. i hate it. i hate it. i hate it. i hate it. i hate it.” He later apologised for his language on Facebook, writing: “My story and my life are real. I am a real human being. While I may have tweeted out of anger, I in no way regret standing up for myself.”
In his book, Schultz is clear that du Pont creeped him out. He acknowledges widespread rumours at the time that du Pont was gay, but does not connect these to their relationship. The film’s central focus as a gay monster movie seems to have come from the imaginations of the film-makers rather than the testimony of the only surviving person who was involved in events. Some critics have seen this as homophobic: “In its grim, art-movie way, Foxcatcher is a form of gay-bashing,” wrote Armond White in Out magazine.
Sports
In the film, Mark Schultz’s relationship with du Pont sours, and du Pont summons Schultz’s brother – fellow wrestler Dave (Mark Ruffalo) – to live on the Foxcatcher estate, too. In real life, Mark and Dave never lived on the property at the same time. Dave coaches Mark back to professional standard. One extraordinary scene in the movie, in which Mark manages to lose 12lbs of weight in 90 minutes before a competition by putting on all his clothes and pedalling as fast as he can on an exercise bike – is accurate, according to Schultz.
Crime
Warning: this section contains a spoiler.
Du Pont calmly gets into his car, drives to Dave Schultz’s house and, without getting out of the car, shoots him three times. In the film, this seems to happen directly after the previous events, except for a change of season. In fact, it happened several years later, and there’s no reason to think it was related to du Pont’s relationship with Mark Schultz. Foxcatcher cuts a long period during which du Pont’s mental health seems to have declined. According to some reports, he became paranoid and delusional, insisting everything black be removed from his presence and believing the colour was a harbinger of death. He is said to have become obsessed with the idea he was being constantly watched by intruders or evil spirits, and to have carried loaded guns and threatened people, including his ex-wife (who isn’t depicted in this movie). At his trial for Dave Schultz’s murder, experts testified he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. In the film, du Pont is captured by police almost immediately. In real life, he staged a two-day standoff in which he was holed up in the steel-lined library in his mansion until the cops froze him out by turning off the heating.
Verdict
Foxcatcher has terrific performances from three of the most talented and versatile actors working in Hollywood today: Carell, Tatum and Ruffalo. It’s an accomplished piece of film-making, but a creative – and evidently, to some, offensive – take on the true story.
• Foxcatcher: the ‘uneasy relationship between money and creativity’
• Peter Bradshaw’s review of Foxcatcher: a superb variant on the underdog sports movie
