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A surefire Oscar contender. The best sports movie in years. The film in which Channing Tatum breaks a mirror with his face. The reason why Steve Carell's wearing that beak-like prosthetic nose. ("And the award for Best Flesh-Toned Pickled Cucumber goes to...")
Over the next few months, Foxcatcher (opening in theaters today) will be described in many ways. It'll also receive more hyperbolic praise than a Kanye West album. Moneyball director Bennett Miller's new reality-based drama deserves all of it, too. A powerhouse showcase for its cast, Foxcatcher is a quietly devastating look at a perverse mentorship gone horribly awry.
But here's a left-field view of the year's darkest piece of Oscar-bait: Steve Carell's character is the worst-case-scenario version of what The 40-Year-Old Virgin's Andy Stitzer could’ve turned into if not for his sex-obsessed but well-meaning Smart Tech co-workers.
The obviousness of casting Carell in a movie as dread-fueled as Foxcatcher lies somewhere between hiring Ashton Kutcher to be Steve Jobs and getting Denise Richards to play a nuclear physicist. But it's a stroke of genius on Bennett Miller's part. Foxcatcher's creepiness sneaks up on you; your early inclination while watching is to laugh when Carell first appears, because, you know, it's Brick Tamland! He loves lamp! That urge doesn't last long.
Foxcatcher tells the tragic story of real-life multimillionaire/author/ornithologist John du Pont (Carell) and wrestling champions Mark (Channing Tatum) and Dave (Mark Ruffalo) Schultz. In anticipation of the 1988 Summer Olympics, du Pont—whose family accrued millions of dollars through black powder manufacturing and their prize-winning thoroughbred horses—moves the Schultz brothers into his family's Pennsylvania estate to upgrade his Team Foxcatcher wrestling team; Mark to wrestle, Dave to coach. The outcome isn't pretty.
The connection to Judd Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin is, at first, purely superficial—Carell anchors both films. Yet the characters are strangely linked. In Foxcatcher, John lives alone with his domineering, wheelchair-ridden mother, Jean du Pont (Vanessa Redgrave), and, like Andy, is virginal, just not in the ‘What’s a vagina look like?’ way. Despite his wealth and aged face, John has barely grown up, the result of his repressive mother’s unaffectionate parenting. You get the sense he's never been on a date, let alone had a meaningful romantic relationship. He tells Mark that the only friend he ever had was his mother's chauffeur's teenage son, and Mrs. du Pont paid him to be John's buddy. John's overpowering resentment of his mother makes him behave like a caged sociopath who is ready to break free.
One scene in particular drives home Foxcatcher’s parallels to The 40-Year-Old Virgin. du Pont is having a stern conversation with his mother. He’s trying to impress her with a meaningless medal he won after wrestling other middle-aged men at a Freestyle Championship event arranged by, yes, du Pont. He might as well have found the medallion in a Cracker Jack box. "You funded this, presumably," Jean says dismissively, before telling her son that "wresting is a low sport—I don’t like seeing you be low." Within the same exchange, she asks him if he wants to keep his toy train set; trying to save some 50-year-old face, John scoffs at the train set and reminds her about his involvement in the oh-so-macho sport of wrestling: “I am giving men a dream, and I’m giving America hope.” She's not impressed.
Jean, like Foxcatcher’s audience, knows he’s little more than a weak man feebly grasping for respect. You can see the pain and helplessness on Steve Carell’s face. The emasculating moment brings to mind The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s scene where Andy’s patient and understanding lover, Trish (Catherine Keener), wants to finally get intimate on their 20th date. More concerned with holding his Iron Man doll than removing Trish’s pants, Andy clams up and goes off on an infantile tangent about conserving the "integrity" of his toys by keeping them in their packaging. Trish, understandably, blacks out.
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In both films, it's a woman that forces Carell’s characters to confront their pathetic immaturity. Trish thinks there’s hope for Andy, so she pleads with him; Jean knows her son is a lost cause, so she, pun intended, sons him. Both approaches have story-altering consequences. Because The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a warm, accessible comedy, Andy gradually grows up and changes for the better; John du Pont, on the other hand, isn’t so fortunate.
Andy is lucky enough to have the debaucherous, foul-mouthed Jay (Romany Malco), David (Paul Rudd), and Cal (Seth Rogen) in his corner; John’s well-being, on the other hand, hinges on two people who are, like Andy's boys, vastly unlike him but who bring out his darkest impulses. Mark and Dave Schultz are brought into du Pont’s cold, lonely world under pretenses that would best be addressed in a therapist’s office, not on a wrestling mat. When John was younger, his controlling mother never let him sign up for manly sports, namely wrestling, instead pushing him towards the "more dignified" world of horses. While drunk, John keeps it real: "Horses are stupid—horses eat and shit, that’s all they do."
Initially, he sees a kindred spirit in Mark, an Olympic gold medalist who, beneath his muscles, is a deeply unhappy guy. He lives in his older brother's shadow and can't shake the feeling that his country doesn't give a half-fuck about his patriotic accomplishments. In du Pont, Mark receives the ego boosts he’s been craving—he naively buys into all of the 'you deserve more from America' bullshit John feeds him. Hiring the Schultz brothers is John’s way of rebelling against his mother; she never let him become a man, but, dammit, he’s going to “lead men” to spite her anyway. Unfortunately, as John’s mental stability fractures, and his mother’s indifference towards his Team Foxcatcher facade grows icier, his complicated relationship with the Schultz brothers goes to hell.
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Bennett Miller directs Foxcatcher with a cold detachedness that mirrors du Pont’s remove from normalcy. Carell plays du Pont as an asocial monster who’s always on the verge of hurting himself and/or everyone around him. John speaks in brief, calculated statements surrounded by long pauses; his eyes are always half-open. He looks at people the same way he watches his birds, sizing humans up with a hunter’s curiosity. With birds, his endgame is taxidermy; with Mark and Dave, John’s looking to exude virility by association. Just like how Andy Stitzer hopes to lose his V-card by soaking up his Smart Tech pals’ game.
In one of The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s funniest scenes, Jay tells the sexually green Andy, "You’re putting the pussy on a pedestal… You’re making the pussy into this great big Greek goddess named 'Pussalia.'" Eventually, Andy defeats his insecurities (or slays 'Pussalia'), becomes Perseus, and marries his Andromeda. Carell's performance earns the knowingly silly yet effervescent end-credits dance number to "The Age of Aquarius." In Foxcatcher, Carell sells you on something much bleaker. He makes you believe that John du Pont desperately wants to be Zeus, even though he’s really Hades.
Matt Barone is a Complex senior staff writer who'd like to remind you that Steve Carell also voiced "Gary" in those brilliant The Ambiguously Gay Duo shorts. He tweets here.
