Class and Kinesis: Mommy and Foxcatcher

Speaking of class, Xavier Dolan's Mommy is a delirious film about a working class mother who is trying to find a way to cope with and help her volatile son. The filmmaker does a crack job placing the woman in her class—she carries a key chain laden with keys and trinkets, she overdresses and shows too much flesh. At the same time, you can't help but admire her ability to walk down the street in an impractical pair of heavy high-heeled clogs. Her son was a brilliantly kinetic, quicksilver kid, who had been in some kind of reform school. She was bringing him home, hoping to homeschool him. In a key scene (doesn’t move the action along but gives us a sense of who the kid is—that he lives to move) he skateboards to the mall where he does a mad and violent dance whirling a shopping cart around in circles. (Later, I wonder if Dolan is using a GoPro to film this) When he comes home with food and the gift of a necklace that says "mommy," the mother accuses him of theft. A battle ensures. It was, to me, a brilliant study in the way you can break a child or extremely sensitive person's heart with the wrong word and set them off. And yet of course, it is entirely forgivable. She is terrified that he will be institutionalized. Later, he is able to communicate and finish his high school work with an educated—the program blurb calls her mousy—woman who lives across the street because she confronts the kid with his own grief regarding the loss of his father, which his mother cannot. There is another scene in the kitchen of their house where the kid, his mother and the woman get drunk and dance. It is so believable, so tender, so intimate and such a wonderful expression of joy. And as my dance teachers all say, you cannot hide in your movement. Movement tells all. Dolan understands this.

The kid wants to go to Julliard, and I would assume it’s clear to the privileged audience who will watch the film that a messed-up working class kid will never get there. And I suppose, like Ken Loach, who has explored the theme of social services, Dolan wants us to see this. A rich kid would have had tutors (he does have a tutor, but is by chance) and dance lessons and therapists and all kinds of support to help direct and anchor what Dolan shows us as great vertiginous creative energy and desire. In the end, but not before another delirious dream sequence, in a normal screen ratio—the whole film has been in an almost square format, foregrounding as we used to say, the claustrophobia of the situation—in which his life unfolds along the lines of any mother's wishes. In the end the mother can't cope with him and a lawsuit for an event prior to the film is hanging over their heads, so she sends him off to the booby hatch. Blurbs I have read seemed to misplace the focus on the mother-son relationship, which of course, because her husband is dead, is too close and somewhat dysfunctional. I would like to see it again, because my sense was that was not where Dolan wants it to go, but I do not know his oeuvre. It is not from the mother’s point of view, nor the son’s POV.

The filmmaker seemed way too cool to blame the mother, which is the default setting of the rest of the world. There was a narrative business of a lawsuit, which the mother could not afford to pay, seeing it only once, it was not clear to me it this was the reason she needed to institutionalize her son. On the other hand, Dolan does not emphasize the narrative business, so the meaning is elsewhere.

Whose story gets told? This is a story about a single parent, cleaning houses to make some money, with a problematic child. Most women at the festival loved it.

Most of the men had this or that problem with it.

Foxcatcher is another compelling and well-crafted story of great energy, talent and desire, this time in the life of an Olympic wrestler and his brother and based on the true story of Mark and Dave Shultz.  John DuPont more or less rescues the gifted and strong but vulnerable Marc, gives him a training gym and a team to prepare for the World Championships and later the Olympics. DuPont, however, is a complete nutter played by Steve Carell with a disturbing lack of affect, who traps the hapless athlete in an abusive relationship. The dark interactions have no homoerotic overtones, but the young wrestler’s victimization follows the classic pattern identified by women’s advocates against domestic violence. But of course, power is always the issue, not gender.  According to the actual events, the situation eventually ends in Marc’s emotional collapse and physical failure, loss of his title, career and the murder of his brother by the unstable DuPont. The film is shadowed by the irony of DuPont's fixation on guns—it adheres closely to Chekov's famous dictum: if there is a gun in the first act, some one will die in the last act—and his family's great wealth, which has been accrued through supplying armaments and military chemicals, beginning with the revolutionary war. But here wealth has produced a completely disturbed and delusional scion, like the degenerate monarchies of Europe, and tragedy ensues because of his ability to buy and destroy whatever he wants.

Wrestling, from my point of view, is just ten steps away from modern dance, being directed toward the floor (ballet directed upwards, modern is rooted and often has sequences on the floor, Limon, Graham, etc.) so I admire the strength and quickness of their practice. The relationship between the brothers, Mark  (Channing Tatum) and Dave (Mark Ruffalo), his older more socially able brother, is very well played. George made the insightful comment that there was not one false note in the acting and I agree.

Michael Barker, of Sony Pictures, who released the film, showed up at the Patron's brunch wearing a Foxcatcher sweatshirt. Later, he lead a remarkable discussion with the effervescent Volker Schlondorff, clearly, this man knows how to use his wealth and power to produce and distribute thoughtful films.