Director Bennett Miller arrives for the "Foxcatcher" gala at the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, September 8, 2014.MARK BLINCH/Reuters
Foxcatcher, the new movie directed by Bennett Miller (the man behind the Oscar winners Capote and Moneyball) – which had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival Monday night – pops with all those familiar movie elements (a true-crime story, sports drama, some startling performances) that should make it a shoo-in for awards. Just don't let that stop you from taking it seriously.
The movie is indeed a true-crime story, about John Eleuthère du Pont (played by Steve Carell, unrecognizable in a prosthetic schnoz and pale eyebrows), heir to the vast DuPont chemical fortune. In the 1980s, du Pont, an eccentric, decided to set up a camp for elite wrestlers at his family's Pennsylvania estate. Among those who benefited from his largesse were two Olympic-winning brothers, Mark and Dave Schultz (played by Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo). What plays out is a very different kind of wrestling match between entitlement and need.
Perhaps not since the Great Depression have films about the poor-rich divide been as prominent as they are right now. On Monday, incidentally, documentarian Michael Moore was at TIFF to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Roger and Me, a pioneering documentary about how General Motors CEO Roger Smith's decisions devastated Moore's hometown. Privilege was also a pervasive theme at this past May's Cannes film festival, including many films that are now at TIFF: the Argentinian anthology film Wild Tales, David Cronenberg's Hollywood satire Maps to the Stars, Russia's Leviathan and Turkey's Palme d'Or-winning Winter Sleep. Here at TIFF, they have been joined by such titles as the real-estate drama 99 Homes, and the documentaries The Price You Pay and The Yes Men Are Revolting.
Foxcatcher's Miller does not want to sound like someone taking up a cause. In Cannes, where the film premiered, he described the story as "bizarre, absurd and ultimately horrible, yet it felt somehow familiar. There were things that were larger than the story that I can relate to the world and how we live in our country. I wouldn't want to make a comment on it."
I got a chance yesterday to ask him if he could expand on those questions of how Foxcatcher explores entitlement and exploitation. The subject, he said, is one he hopes the press picks up on without him having to spell it out.
"Those themes are obviously deep undercurrents of this story," he said. "But it's a film. It really belongs in the realm of film and art and not politics per se. But those themes are clearly the essence of the film."
There are obvious paradoxes here. Foxcatcher owes its existence to Megan Ellison, the heiress of another fortune (she's the daughter of Oracle founder Larry Ellison). But her Annapurna Pictures – the company behind, among others, Zero Dark Thirty, Her, American Hustle and The Master – has emerged as a champion of high-quality, thoughtful American cinema. And no one can ignore that TIFF, which advertises itself as "the people's festival," is itself a spectacle of privilege. Consider this year's crazy-rich $1,500 "buzz list package" for five in-demand films. But even with its regular $24 tickets ($46 for a red-carpet event) TIFF is not an event for the poor, except perhaps the pan-handlers taking advantage of the uptown crowds and tourists milling about on King Street.