The Oscars are eight months away still, but the unofficial kickoff to awards season started on Monday morning in Cannes, when Bennett Miller’s new drama “Foxcatcher” was screened to journalists at the Lumiere.
The knockout performance in a cast of great performances is Steve Carell as John du Pont, the schizophrenic millionaire who in 1996 murdered Olympic wrestler David Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) after befriending his wrestler brother Mark (Channing Tatum).
Carell is barely recognizable in the part, wearing a prosthetic nose (a la Nicole Kidman in “The Hours”), false teeth and a receding hairline. It’s not just the physical transformation that’s so impressive. He seems to be living the character from within his bones. Carell interprets du Pont as a modern-day Norman Bates via Jay Gatsby, and he prepared for the part by studying hours of footage of the real man.
“I watched as much as I could, I read as much as I could about him and tried to get semblance about the type of person he was,” Carell said in the Cannes press conference following the film. It turned out there was a lot of material to choose from, because du Point was such a narcissistic, he commissioned documentaries about his own life. He turned his Pennsylvania estate into a training ground for American wrestlers and called himself a coach, even though he didn’t know much about the sport.
Miller said that he there was nothing in Carell’s comedic career that suggested he could pull off such a rigorous character study. But after a lunch, Miller was convinced he had it in him. “I think all comedians are dark,” Miller said, who kept using the variations of the word “journalistic” when describing how he and his cast went about adapting the real-life story.
Sony Pictures Classics, which will release the film on Nov. 14 in the United States, hasn’t decided yet if Carell will enter the lead or supporting actor category in the Oscar race, but he’ll certainly be nominated no matter what they choose. (Though, he’d probably stand a better chance of winning if they went with supporting.) There’s a clear sense watching the film, that the work Career does onscreen will be — much like Jared Leto in “Dallas Buyers Club” — one of the transformative acting stories of the year.
Beyond Carell, the movie also showcases the greatest work that Tatum (the film’s lead) and Ruffalo (in a supporting role) have done, and both should be considered strong bets for Oscar nominations too, as well as Miller (who made trips to the Academy Awards with “Capote” and “Moneyball”) in the directing and best picture contests.”We prepared pretty intensely for about five to six months,” said Tatum, adding that the wrestling practice left him and Ruffalo with bum knees. It was worth the sacrifice: “Foxcatcher” will be one of the big success stories out of Cannes.
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