Team
Foxcatcher
Directed
by: Jon
Greenhalgh.
Anyone of has seen Bennett
Miller’s excellent film Foxcatcher (2014), will likely find two things odd
about the Netflix documentary, Team Foxcatcher – which, like Miller’s (heavily
fictionalized film), centers on the murder of wrestler Dave Schultz at the
hands of eccentric million John Du Pont. The first is that the existence of
Mark Schultz isn’t even mentioned -
despite the fact that he was Dave’s brother, was also an Olympic wrestler, and
also lived (for a time) at the Foxcatcher ranch with John Du Pont. I understand
that perhaps Mark didn’t want to be involved in the documentary – and the
filmmakers may have wanted to concentrate on other aspects of the story, but to
not mention him seems odd (Mark, as portrayed by Channing Tatum, was the main character
in Foxcatcher). The other odd thing is that Team Foxcatcher doesn’t even
reference Miller’s film at all – odd, because it was the Miller film that brought
the case back into the media’s attention, which likely meant this film got green
lit, and because the Netflix doc is clearly trying to cash in on the name
recognition of that film, by calling this one Team Foxcatcher. Neither of this
omissions is fatal to the documentary – and yet, taken together, they do make
you wonder what else the film may not be mentioning. By their nature, even
documentary films cannot tell the complete story of any one event – yet when
there are omissions like this, it does make you think.
Team Foxcatcher is a fairly
straight forward re-telling of what happened in 1996 – when John Du Pont went
from eccentric millionaire to murderer – and all the warning signs that should
have been seen by any number of people, who chose not to see them because Du
Pont was so rich. It wasn’t that Du Pont was above the law, and would bribe his
way out of trouble – it was that he was everyone’s meal ticket, and really, what
harm was he doing? He was weird, he liked to hunt animals out of the window of
his car, etc. But he put so much money in USA wrestling, and into local institutions,
including the police, everyone just decided to look the other way.
Team Foxcatcher, by its very
nature, ends up being a morose affair – the film doesn’t try to surprise the
audience with the revelation of the murder – so that almost the entire movie
plays as preamble to it – each piece being obvious to the audience, but not to
those being interviewed. Of course, since by the time the documentary was made,
Dave Schultz and John Du Pont had died, its missing the two most important
players in the drama. The two of them seem to haunt the movie – seen only in
glimpses in home video footage – presenting a cheerful front. We do have
interviews with Schultz’s wife, and children – but they are hardly the most
central figures to the doc. Those are the other wrestlers who spent time at
Foxcatcher, alongside Schultz and Du Pont – who makes everything sound like it
was terrific – right up until it wasn’t, which was long before the murder.
Team Foxcatcher is an odd
documentary in that it is a film that doesn’t acknowledge the existence of
Bennett Miller’s fictionalized account in Foxcatcher, and yet is going to be of
interest primarily to those who have seen that film. Miller’s film was
undeniably fictionalized – it compressed time, it ascribed motivations of
people that are questionable – and took other liberties necessary to tell a
story. Team Foxcacther takes a Dragnet style, just the facts ma’am, approach to
telling the story. The result is interesting – a perhaps necessary film that
lets people see the real people Miller fictionalized. But without Miller’s far
better film, I wonder if Team Foxcatcher would be very interesting at all – I
doubt it. It plays like a DVD bonus feature more than a film unto itself – a
good feature to be sure, but a bonus feature just the same.
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