Foxcatcher shows dark side of the soul

When we look into the eyes of the great capitalists of American cinema, from Orson Welles' Charles Foster Kane to Daniel Day-Lewis' Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood and Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, we see balls of fire. They are windows into the souls of men inflamed by money and power.

In startling contrast, when we look into the eyes of Foxcatcher's John du Pont, heir to one of America's great fortunes, we see nothing. They are the deadest eyes I can ever recall seeing on the screen, black holes so devoid of the spark of life I thought I was watching a zombie flick.

I'm not sure if it's a feat of great acting by Steve Carell, who in this bizarre true-life tale casts off so thoroughly his warm, funnyman persona I'm not sure I'll ever laugh at him again, or they have used contact lenses to further disguise him - along with the prosthetic nose and the aged, freckled skin.

But those lifeless eyes communicate all we need to know about the very strange figure of du Pont and his world, providing a rare glimpse into a milieu that has more in common with the decay and despair we see in European movies dealing with the same class (I Am Love and the recent PIAF opener Human Capital).

We enter that creepily airless, antique world through the most curious means imaginable when a pair of wrestlers, Mark and David Schultz (Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo), are approached by du Pont to join his training camp at his sprawling Maryland estate known as Foxcatcher which he shares with his mother, a crabbed matriarch played by Vanessa Redgrave.

While gold hangs around Mark's neck after victory at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, he's a glum, painfully inarticulate man who hasn't been able to capitalise on his wrestling achievements. Endorsements don't exactly flow to a sport in which men climb into tights and grapple each other like kids in a playground.

So when Mark gets an out-of-the-blue call from the multi-millionaire to join the group of wrestlers gathering at Foxcatcher (named for its horsey tradition) he happily packs up his meagre possessions and moves to a swanky cabin on du Pont's spread.

Dave, on the other hand, is more gregarious and socially adept, a family man who is so well regarded as a coach he has no problem finding work in the wake of his Olympic victory. So he turns down du Pont's offer and gets on with his life.

Meanwhile, back at Foxcatcher things go from strange to plain weird as du Pont, a patriot who sees himself a great leader of men and charged with the mission of restoring America to its former glory, takes on the role of head coach even though he has never wrestled before and knows next to nothing about the sport.

Things take a sinister turn when du Pont starts parading Mark around at gatherings of captains of industry like he was his pet monkey and, later, introduces him to cocaine and orders him to join him at the big house for late-night training sessions (du Pont's sexuality is never raised but the whole film has an unhealthily repressed air about it).

Dave eventually accedes to du Pont's request that he joins the camp if only to keep an eye on his dim-witted, suggestible younger brother. But this leads to jealousy, rivalry and acrimony that pushes the film towards its tragic conclusion (the less you know about the true story the better).

Not a lot happens in Foxcatcher and it's very slow and sombre (it's definitely not for sports fans looking for action). But Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball) is one of America's most meticulous directors and there is not a scene or a moment in this immaculately made movie that does not add another layer to this rich and fascinating study of money, power and class and the poisonous effects it has on those with it and those without it.

Tatum has the thankless task of playing an athlete without much of a consciousness but he uses his body beautifully to capture a man struggling to rise above himself, who cannot walk without channelling his gorilla-like moves on the canvas.

And Oscar-nominated Ruffalo infuses Dave with so much warmth and love for his brother that he almost takes the movie into a whole other direction. Indeed, some will find Foxcatcher unsatisfying because it never quite settles on the story of du Pont and his mania or the brothers and their struggle to parlay Olympic glory into a decent living.

But the movie belongs to Carell who doesn't simply impersonate du Pont but digs so deep into the man's soul (if indeed that's what he has left after a lifetime living in lonely splendour with his shrivelled-up, horse-loving old mother) that you both fear him and, by the pathetic tragic end, pity him.

See this film if only for the memorable scene in which du Pont pretends to coach his charges to show Mum he's a great leader of men.

Never has pomposity and self-delusion been so devastatingly captured. Next thing you know he'll be conferring knighthoods on his wrestlers.