A deeply chilling and disturbing tone poem of a film.

Rating: 9/10 (16 January 2015)

I can't remember when a non-horror film has made me feel so uncomfortable and tense for it's whole length. It's a quiet film. Slow. Subtle. Almost dreamlike. Much of what happens occurs without dialogue. But there is always a heavy feeling of doom floating over it's sad characters.
And what a fascinating bunch of characters. Based on real people, I found myself wondering if a novelist could come up with a trio so laden with emotional and social meaning.
John DuPont (Steve Carrell) is the mega millionaire who is vaguely 'off', and clearly fighting mental demons. He dreams of being a wrestling coach and somehow coaching America to glory, so he essentially buys a now down on his luck ex-champion Mark Shultz (Channing Tatum) to come and wrestle for him. The two men have a complicated and tricky relationship. There is admiration, father and son bonding, resentment and even seemingly unspoken sexual attraction. But neither man is able to communicate about almost any of it, or deal with any of the feelings themselves.
The third member of the triumvirate is Shultz's older brother Dave (Mark Rufflao). Less of a painful introvert than his brother, Dave has been Mark's coach and only friend. They have a complex filial relationship, captured beautifully by director Bennett Miller and writers Dan Futterman and E. Max Frye in the lengthy, almost wordless opening scene where Dave leads Mark through a training session. Just as messy, if healthier, than Mark's relationship with DuPont, we see in the scene the love, admiration, jealousy and rivalry that exists between these two quiet men.
Now Dave joins Mark at DuPont's vast compound to be 'assistant coach' to DuPont's 'coach', which is deeply bizarre as it quickly becomes clear that Dave knows 10 times as much about both wresting and leadership as DuPont ever will. As we watch a frustrated DuPont quietly head into an ever darker place the tension grows as thick as in a Polanski film, and even the film's conclusion provides little in the way of release. I headed back out into the night with a knot still in my stomach. It's the rare film that can pull me into that kind of claustrophobic space of madness and loss.
A word has to be given to the tremendous work done by all three actors, along with Vanessa Redgrave as DuPont's mother -- unforgettable in a role that only gives her a few minutes of screen time. While Carrell has gotten the lion's share of the kudos (and he is terrific, reinventing himself as a purely dramatic actor) both Tatum and Ruffalo also do world class work here, creating inarticulate men who express with their eyes and bodies what they don't quite know how to express with words.
This is not a 'fun' movie, but it is one that you can feel deeply, and end up pondering the nature of madness, success, the American dream, family in a way too few American films do.