It is difficult to fathom exactly what is going on in director Bennett Miller's
Foxcatcher. The characters here are hesitant to let you into their worlds let alone their heads. As an audience member, we feel as if we're watching from the outside in on the situation at hand, never knowing the motivation of anyone as each seem to live in this world of fear. Whether it be John du Pont (Steve Carell), Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) or even Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) each possess a fear of either coming to terms with logic and the abnormalities of their situation or the fear of losing control. While the Schultz brothers are vastly different from one another they both come to understand the oddities of their circumstances at Du Pont's Foxcatcher farms. Du Pont, on the other hand, is little more than a mystery to everyone around him. Mark comes to the heir of the Du Pont family fortune early and allows the stranger things about his mentor to slip through the cracks because he shows a belief in him that no one else has ever extended. Still, despite the relationships that evolve and the dynamics that come to the surface never do we feel as if we can see why these characters are the way they are. Every line of dialogue though is used to peel back a layer of the characters and reveal something more about the backstory that has made this person who they are today. It is a technique that Miller uses most effectively allowing us to constantly crave more from the film while only giving away what it wants you to know so as to not poison the ambition of the project with unsatisfying conclusions. Whether you know what is coming or not you are riveted by the procedural nature of the film as it methodically chronicles the rise and fall of a friendship never believed to be genuine and the repercussions of the falling out of that paid for affection.
Foxcatcher is a strange film filled with strange people, but it is all the more fascinating for it. It is a film I feel I could go on writing about for days and discussing at even greater length as I know each time I re-visit it I will only find new things that only highlight what I might have barely took note of before. It is a cold film, one that will at first seem off-putting for it, but the more you think about it the more the inhumanity produced by the circumstances it chronicles eats away at you.
