Around Christmas each year my parents would force (yes
“force”) my brother and I to visit their old friends and their families, bringing
with us a tin of mother’s oatmeal cookies. The older folks (25 or so) would
talk of old times while we kids who did not know each other, would stare at
each other with controlled disdain. I remember how odd it all was. I remember other people’s houses had their
own smells and the furniture was, in my mind, depressing. The cookies they
served were just wrong. How could people live like this? Strange places, strange kids, strange
parents. I was always glad when this awkward holiday tradition was over and we
were home where things weren’t always good, but where they were comfortable.
Thank goodness, I’m over that particular childhood peculiarity.
Generally I love the diversity that exists in the human species. But watching these two movies I revisited
this sense of unease, prompted by the oddness of others, especially others in
an eternal state of disconnection. This double feature is an odd pairing, two
films inhabited by people who live in bubbles that glance each other in passing.
Foxcatcher
validates the cliché, “truth is stranger than fiction.” John du Pont, ornithologist, philatelist and
philanthropist as well as having a wrestling obsession is a member of the du Pont dynasty, probably America’s richest family at the time. As John Steve Carrel) provides a portrait of a convincingly
strange and needy, gun-toting loser whose mother had to buy him a friend when he was young.
Nothing much changed as he grew older. Only now he could buy his own
friend. He sought out, manipulated and
essentially bought a young and vulnerable Olympic wrestler ostensibly to groom
for the Olympics. The motive is iffy and subject to interpretation. The new protégé, (Channing Tatum), has self-worth problems of his own. He grew up in the shadow of his more talented
older brother (Mark Ruffalo) and
welcomed du Pont’s attention. The new emotionally wounded friends were destined to destroy each other. Vanessa Redgrave played the cold, wealthy matriarch who could
barely tolerate being in the same room as her son. Bennett
Miller directed this critically hailed film. The cast is flawless.
American Beauty validates
another cliché, that truth is often found in fiction. Away from the chilled and
rarefied air of the the upper class in Foxcatcher,
we descend into the middle class, its hunger for conformity, its silly
materially measured success and its great capacity for and encouragement of
insincerity. Kevin Spacey plays a
man bored with his own mediocrity and the values of the living dead who
surround him. He wants out. While his
current life has left its share of collateral damage, getting out isn’t without
wreckage. He has a neurotic daughter, a disconnected wife and damaged
neighbors. With help from a solid cast —
Annette Bening, Chris Cooper and Wes Bentley
among them — the film reminds us that even with salvation, we don’t get out alive. Sam
Mendes directed the multiple award-winning 1999 classic.
Both films provide a smooth but far from simple glimpse into
the complicated lives of their inhabitants. There are no simple answers. Right and wrong are not self-evident. As
crime films of a sort, guilt and innocence are nonetheless hard to parse. Both
are movies you might like to savor or discuss. Both, it seems to me, take us
to unpleasant worlds, its inhabitants bumping into each other blindly. Perhaps you should sip your wine until the
credits role.
