"Foxcatcher" (2014)

If you’ve ever read Dale Carnegie’s book “How To Make Friends and Influence People” you learn a fundamental truth about rich people. They love the sound of their names (this is apparently true to everyone. If you recall their names in conversation, people will like you). But the wealthy spend millions upon millions on making sure their name and legacy lives on beyond them.

The DuPont name is synonymous with chemicals. The very name instantly brings up a generation of wealth, which has, by this movie’s inference left to a spoiled child who suffers disapproval that of a mama’s boy. Nothing John DuPont seems to do will ever fill the void of a man-child who has total access to toys. Even if those toys happen to be human lives. This is played by Steve Carrell. Which he does with a brutal, self-hating anger, that is scary. Especially in his quieter moments. By the way, I really hate it when people say "he didn't just play the role, he WAS him" Really? Like this is what he brought home with him when he fucked his wife.

I wrestled in high school. I won one, a lost one. The one I lost, I broke my forearm and never wrestled again. The short period of training, they’ve captured perfectly in the movie. Having been around other guys who wrestled, they also PERFECTLY matched the mannerisms of people who spent their lives find the lowest center of gravity. Witness the posture of Channing Tatum as Mark Schultz and Mark Raffalo as Dave Shultz. Two brothers who’ve won Olympic gold. But now have been marginalized by a more glamorous world of mixed martial arts (this being the thin harbinger of the sport that would eventually enveloped boxing). Mark is tossed into obscurity left to give motivational speeches to children for a few bucks. The kids don’t care. Nor should they. As a former wrestler, I realized that the sports in my high school that got a shred of coverage was football or golf. Even field hockey got more ink than we did. But…I can’t describe being at a match, nor could this movie ever capture that sensation. To verbalize it would be to trivialize it. And can only be felt from within. I suppose that was why it died on the vine. Even though, next to soccer, it is the LEAST expensive sport out there (shoes and tights, that’s it).

What was fascinating about this movie is that it had very little to do with sports. It’s about being marginalized. John DuPont could never live up to his mother. Mark could never live up to his brother.  And when there is even a chance that they could achieve immortality…the stakes get high.

I suppose in a sense John DuPont carved out a name for himself. If you happened to have lived through that era, the name was mockingly attached to a tragedy rather than the chemicals. It’s fitting that the title conjures up the notion that there is always a hunt in us.