If you're a fan of the sport of
wrestling, you may be familiar with the story of the Schultz
brothers, a pair of Olympic champs who caught the eye of a
millionaire philanthropist following the '84 L.A. Olympics.
But you needn't be a wrestling buff to
appreciate this stranger-than-fiction true story, brilliantly
dramatized by Cannes prize winner Bennett Miller in Foxcatcher.
Just like his swell previous feature Moneyball, what Miller
has achieved here is a sports movie that's not actually about the
sport, but about something far bigger and more elusive. Incidentally,
like Moneyball was in 2011, Foxcatcher is also one
of the finest films of the year.
Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is
obsessed with being the best, but doomed to never feel like the best.
Even his Olympic gold medal seems outshone by that of his older
brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo), whose personal life is far more
fulfilled.
Dave is more famous, a better
wrestler/coach, a happy family man, and still quietly exudes his
protective instincts towards his baby bro. A beautifully staged
sparring sequence early in the film between the two brothers tells us
everything we need to know about their relationship with hardly a
single word of dialogue.
