Foxcatcher Review

Foxcatcher begins with a short clip of a fox hunt. It appears authentic as the hunters mount horses and a team of perhaps a hundred blood hounds nose the scent of a doomed fox. We see a fox released and know that he or she has little chance-to call it a sport is as absurd as calling water boarding an Enhanced Interrogation Technique. I thought immediately of how cruel and speciesist we are. But the opening of Foxcatcher, directed by Bennet Miller, invites some consideration.  Is the opening simply providing a context for the name of the film? Or does it suggest foreshadowing or an analogy?  

The film is based on true events.  Having enormous wealth, John du Pont, played with a mixture of social ineptitude and leering creepiness, is able to get whatever he wants without having really to work for it--the affliction of the rich.  So he lures Mark Shultz, played by Channing Tatum to the du Pont estate, Foxcatcher,  to train him, but it is clear that du Pont has no idea how to wrestle or how to train. He has money and that’s about it. It is why he is tolerated.  Carell plays du Pont as a despicable and disgusting person. He is quite good. 

However, the real strength of the film rests in the relationship between Mark and David Schultz, Mark’s older brother. David Shultz is played by Mark Ruffola and conveys through his performance his deep love and affection for his brother. It is affecting and sad. 

The film mines familiar familial territory—the younger brother lives in the shadow cast by his older brother. But this is hardly David’s fault—he loves his younger brother and when Mark starts acting oddly, David is genuinely concerned. Mark resists initially David’s counsel, but David loves his brother and simply will not be shut out. Eventually, Mark comes to the estate to train after initially refusing, causing Mark resent him.  This leads to a confrontation between David and du Pont, which the film intimates was the catalyst for du Pont’s coldblooded murder. 

The rich du Pont wants to satisfy his mother, played with diffidence by Vanessa Redgrave, and so funds the Olympic team. But he also wants admiration, respect, deference from his wrestlers: he deserves none. He wants what the Schultz brothers worked so hard for, but without any of the work.  When du Pont yells “why don’t you like me,” at David as he shoots him, in front of his wife, we understand that du Pont’s nothing more than a vacuous person with emotional child and mentally ill. The film paints a glum picture of the wealthy.

Whiplash Painfully Good

While I did study literature and film in college, my knowledge of music is woefully inadequate. So when I heard about the new film written and directed by Damien Chazelle Whiplash focused on music, I thought Metallica and not Hank Levy.  (I doubt Lars could play the song by Levy.)  

Whiplash moves briskly like the song itself—fast, technical and tense. The film stars Miles Teller as first-year student Andrew, who attends Shaffer Conservatory, one of the best musical colleges in the country. Practicing one day the aforementioned song, his drumming catches the attention of the mercurial Terence Fletcher, played with amazing intensity by J.K. Simmons. Fletcher is the brilliant musician who conducts the school’s prestige jazz band.  He demands discipline, dedication and deference. 

The basic plot is familiar: exacting teacher/coach/leader demands excellence from his students/players/men.  The difference is how Fletcher “instructs”; he manipulates, humiliates, and intimidates his students. Fletcher uses every little piece of information as a tool against his students. Fletcher, in one intense scene, repeatedly smacks Andrew in full view of the band in effort to teach the difference between “rushing” and “dragging.” It is cruel and shocking.  The scenes between Fletcher and Andrew and the band are the strength of the film.  Those scenes are intense and difficult to watch. 

Fletcher thinks his approach produces the best musicians, citing one story about a famous drummer’s perseverance to his pupil, Andrew. We see the folly in this. The berating and mind-fucking of his students is antithetical to pedagogical methodologies and being a decent person. In short, it is sadistic and unnecessary. Or is that the only way to produce extraordinary efforts?  That depends on how one takes the ending. Has Fletcher’s methods worked as Andrew plays triumphantly as the movie ends?  Or does Andrew triumph in spite or to spite Fletcher? Perhaps, it is not a triumphant at all. The film leaves the viewer to decide.  

Either way, the film is one entertaining and intense experience. It is worth the time to seek it out.   

Free Me From the Film Exodus

Exodus: God and Kings slugs along slowly and dismally. With all the CGI effects and familiar battles, not including Ridley Scott’s direction, one might assume some excitement and energy in watching Moses free his people. There is none in the film to speak of.  

The story is familiar to many. Moses, played by Christian Bale, grows up believing he is royalty when in fact he was born a slave.  He eventually frees his people with the help a child-like god.  One of the only interesting elements of the film is that God, at least as Moses sees him, is a child, no more than 9 or 10. This makes perfect sense as the “God” in this story acts like a petulant and immature child. After all, as God, he simply could have avoided all the pain and misery inflicted on all parties without all the gratuitous death and trickery.  I mean, he is God with all the powers of omnipotence and whatever else is conferred upon a deity. And we know he can create, initiate, facilitate (he has a strong hand in the events) a range of terrifying and awesome ‘events.’ Does he not, therefore, have the ability to free the slaves without all the bloodshed?

Consider the killing of the 1^st born child as part of God’s persuasive plan to compel Rameses, played by Joel Ederton, to free those in bondage. If one steps back and logically evaluates this plan, most would find it appalling and frankly immoral.  Why do a lot of innocent children have to die in order to free slaves? Why does the childish God believe this to be a good idea? If he truly loves all people, isn’t it a bizarre thing to kill them?  And what of all the innocent lambs, who are killed so that their blood can be spread across the doors so that the plague can understand that these people are good, sanguineous, but good and thus need to be spared.  God obviously can find no sympathy for the lambs or innocent first born children whose parents decided against bloody commandment. 

But that is problem with the story as a whole, so what can Scott do about that, I suppose.  Still, the film had me thinking about how damn cruel, vicious and immoral the story is without caring a wit about what was happening on the screen. This is not even a film to recommend on video.