Money Can't Buy Me Love.

Rating: 8/10 (23 September 2015)

I have no interest whatever in wrestling and very little in the life styles of the enormously wealthy except in comedies but this film is original and curiously gripping throughout.
The story is based on historical fact and goes something like this. Channing Tatum is an taciturn amateur wrestler hoping to compete in the Olympics of 1988. His brother Mark Ruffalo is his older brother, coach, and best friend -- or ONLY friend as far as we're able to discern. Ruffalo is a laid back kind of guy, supporting his wife and two daughters. Both brothers live in one of those Northeast working-class shack towns of the sort I grew up in.
Then, one day, fate steps into their lives. Du Fate takes the corporeal form of Steve Carell as John du Pont, the fortyish scion of the self-proclaimed "wealthiest family in America" -- they own Delaware -- calls Tatum and invites him to Foxcatcher, the family estate somewhere in the neighborhood of Washington.
To keep it short, Carell acts as wrestling mentor to Tatum and in fact practically adopts him. Carell also gathers a squad of half a dozen promising wrestlers and is going to fund them through the next Olympics, with himself as the head of "Team Foxcatcher." He also hires the quietly cheerful Ruffalo but over time comes to resent Ruffalo's bond with Tatum. Carell wants to do all the bonding around here. It leads to tragedy.
The film is about as far away from the typical "docudrama" as you can get. It's imaginative in almost every respect and plaudits are due especially to Bennett Miller, the director, and editors Jay Cassidy, Stuart Levy, and Conor O'Neil who have figured out the precise length to let a scene linger on the screen.
The performances of the three principals is unimpeachable. Channing Tatum is first seen as an inarticulate brute, shuffling around in a gym, his eyes cast down as always. He speaks in grunts. True, he's a college graduate (I won't name the university, which must be known for its wrestling team) but we can't help asking whose breath blew out the light within this brain. When he tries to read the word "philanthropist" it comes out "philogulist." Steve Carrell is unforgettable as the rich guy. He's got a schnozz on him like a bald eagle and when he speaks -- or even when he doesn't speak -- he tilts his head back and stares down his nose like William F. Buckley. And that voice, so accommodating, so bland, so pragmatic. When he learns that Ruffalo doesn't want to move to Foxcatcher because his family is now established elsewhere, Carrell asks tonelessly, "How much does he want?" Nothing is made of it but it tells us a great deal about being rich.
I don't know how closely it hews to historical reality. I'd never heard of the case. And it's not easy to figure out the dynamics in the narrative because it isn't spelled out for us, as it would be in a child's ABC book. The writer and director have enough trust in the maturity of the audience to let us figure it out for ourselves.
My guess? The mother-dominated rich boy is starved for love. He had one friend in his childhood -- until he discovered that his mother was PAYING the other kid to be a friend. Well, now he's got a whole wrestling team that adores him as their angel. The presence of Ruffalo as the coach who knows what he's about interferes with that paternalistic relationship, not to mention the implicit homoeroticism. Carrell is jealous of Ruffalo.
But you're entitled to your own guess. Or make no guess at all and just watch the understated imagery float with such aplomb across the screen. I'm glad I caught it, though it didn't unleash a love of wrestling. Where I grew up it was all schoolyard fist fights and bloody noses. Like Vanessa Redgrave as the starchy old mother, we'd have considered wrestling a "low sport."