Meet the Contenders: Channing Tatum "Foxcatcher"
Saturday, November 15, 2014 at 6:15PM Each weekend a profile on a just-opened Oscar contender. Here's abstew on this weekend's new release, Bennett Miller's chilling FOXCATCHER, which won him Best Director at Cannes.
Channing Tatum as Mark Schultz in Foxcatcher
Born: Channing Matthew Tatum was born April 26, 1980 in Cullman, Alabama
The Role: Bennett Miller, the Academy Award nominated director of Capote (2005) and Moneyball (2011), takes on another film based on a true story. Tatum stars as wrestler and Olympic gold medalist Mark Schultz as he struggles to get by (surviving on ramen and taking $20 inspirational speech gigs) and to ultimately step out of the shadow of his older brother, fellow wrestler and gold medalist, Dave Schultz (Best Supporting Actor contender, Mark Ruffalo). Mark is soon contacted by an eccentric billionaire (Steve Carell playing John du Pont) that encourages Mark (and eventually Dave) to come to his estate near Valley Forge, named Foxcatcher, to train the athletes on his compound.
Tatum met with Miller years before the project got off the ground, but initially passed on the role then fearing he wasn't yet ready to tackle the dark places the character goes. Once the film was set to go into production, Tatum was ready for the challenge, transforming himself physically (he gained 20 pounds of muscle and trained as a wrestler) and emotionally (Tatum was so intense in one scene where Mark smashes his head in a mirror that he actually cut his own head and put a hole in the wall).
Previous Brushes With Oscar: Although Tatum has worked with celebrated directors Steven Soderbergh, Michael Mann, and Ron Howard, he has yet to appear in a film that has been nominated for an Oscar. For his work in 2006's A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Tatum received an Independent Spirit Award nomination and the film received a Special Jury prize at Sundance for its ensemble. And Foxcatcher isn't the only film he was apart of this year looking for Oscar recognition. He voiced both Superman in The Lego Movie and Joaquin in The Book of Life, both looking to score Best Animated Feature Film nominations.
What Critics Are Saying:
And do not underestimate Mr. Tatum, who goes through his wrestling maneuvers the same way he played the male stripper in Magic Mike—with fastidiously timed precision. For anyone who thinks of him as just another over-publicized hunk who got lucky, listen up. As an athlete going down for the count, this is his juiciest role to date—and he plays it like a hungry man heading for a steak house with somebody else’s credit card.
-Rex Reed New York Observer
But the real revelation may be Channing Tatum, as Schultz' younger brother, Mark. Tatum has always looked like a simple, thick-necked jock — and he's cleverly used that, building a career on playing sweet dumb decent guys (who may be smarter than they look). But here he finds an edge to that.
-Stephen Whitty Newark Star-Ledger
...Channing Tatum’s performance as the nearly monosyllabic Mark Schultz is arguably even more delicate. Tatum excels at playing men who are at home in their bodies but at sea in the social world, and we can feel Mark’s yearning to find a father figure...
-Andrew O'Hehir Salon.com
But Tatum's the one who turns himself inside out here, and there are long stretches of the film where it's just Mark onscreen that are emotionally brutal and almost too hard to watch.
-Drew McWeeny HitFix: Motion Captured
Tatum channels Mark's complexities into his mesmerizing physicality, all brute animal force and lightning reflexes which crumple at every opportunity into a dejected heap of defeat. He makes Mark into a fearsome specimen who nevertheless exudes pure vulnerability. If another reviewer wanted to draw a comparison to DeNiro in Raging Bull, I wouldn’t laugh them out of the room
-Michael Cusumano, The Film Experience
My Take: Awkwardly lumbering onscreen with an underbite and constantly clenched jaw to go with his scowl, Tatum's Mark Schultz is a man that is not at peace. Lost and confused, he continuously wrestles internally with himself (his struggle has a tendency to manifest itself outwardly as he self inflicts physical abuse). Which is why when Carell's du Pont shows interest in him, Mark latches on to the man as a father figure and kindred spirit. Neither has found their place in the world. Searching for acceptance and recognition, they find it in each other. But as Mark descends into the twisted world that du Pont has created, he finds himself withdrawing even further. When a disturbing late night training session with du Pont seems to be about more than just wrestling, the camera settles on the dead look in Tatum's eyes allowing is to realize that something is not right. But Mark has almost resigned himself to complicity with whatever erratic behavior is imposed on him - until he is no longer the favorite. Tatum charts the depth of Mark's confliction with brooding intensity, but he also strips himself of all the natural charm he usually brings as an actor. His performance, much like the film as a whole, is admirable but distant and off-putting. Although we see Tatum push the limits of how far he can bury into the depths of his psyche, he loses us along the way. The journey he's taking is too personal to bring us with him and the film keeps us too much at a distance to ever even try.
Fun Fact: Everyone knows that Tatum used to work in Florida in the early 2000s as a male stripper and that his story became the inspiration for Magic Mike. But did you know that to pay the bills Tatum was also an Abercrombie model, appeared as a dancer in Ricky Martin's music video for "She Bangs", and was in a Mountain Dew commercial.
Probability of a Nomination: Slight Possibility. It seems that the heat the film generated at Cannes has slowly dissolved the longer the season continues and he faces stiff competition in a crowded field. Even within his own film he'll have to fight for recognition as it seems that pundits have been more impressed with the fact that Steve Carell disappears behind a gigantic fake nose and a dour performance. (I personally found his performance a little one-note and too reliant on that transformative make-up job. I preferred Tatum's work from this film.) Tatum is already a big star able to sell blockbusters and he still seems to fit in challenging work with respected filmmakers. If not with this performance (which may be a little too detached for most Oscar voters), his upcoming work with the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino show that he wants to score that first nomination.
"Foxcatcher" opened in NY and LA yesterday. Check out the website to see when it opens in your city.
Reader Comments (12)
nice write-up. And like you, I don't think hes probably going to be nominated but I think he has more than a slight possibility. He definitely appears to be a bonafide contender.
Channing Tatum is someone that took some time to win me over. I wasn't a fan early on due to those Step Up films and the fact that he would mumble his lines. It was 21 Jump Street and Magic Mike that finally won me over. I think he is aware of his limits as an actor yet knows how to use it.
I think Channing is great doing comedy, but I was so unimpressed by Foxcatcher. I thought it was boring, was distracted by Steve Carell's prosthetics, still can't understand why Mark Ruffalo should be nominated for it, and though perhaps Channing was the best in the bunch, it doesn't come close to the performances of the other contenders (I just saw The Imitation Game and was blown away by Benedict Cumberbatch).
I saw Foxcatcher at the gala in the London Film Festival and the reaction was so "meh". For comparison, the next day I saw Whiplash at a noon screening (so no cast and crew around like for Foxcatcher) and people were standing up and clapping in the end. I just can't see Foxcatcher connecting with audiences.
Could they relegate Tatum to supporting actor?
Remember Jake Gyllenhaal was clearly a lead in Brokeback Mountain and he was relegated to supporting.
And last year they were tossing up between Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep. At one stage Meryl was being considered for Supporting and Julia as Lead. Look what happened in the end.
anonny - thanks! oh, he's definitely a contender, but there really is only a slight possibility. i think his chances seemed better earlier in the year, but too many actors are fighting it out for those 5 spots.
steven - yeah, i was a fan early on (i actually enjoy him in STEP UP - he's just so charismatic), but wasn't always sure how i thought of him as an "actor". but he just keeps improving...
anna - i didn't care for the film either. tatum was the performance i liked the most in it, but that's not saying much...
bette streep - he would have a better shot in supporting, for sure. and for awhile i know they were still trying to decide where to place him and carell, but it feels like mark's story more than du pont's. but i still wouldn't rule it out...
A big YES for this nomination to happen. Such a great internal and physical performance.
You say distant and off-putting like that's a bad thing.
I'll be curious to see how the SAG Nominating Committee responds to this film, because some members have gone out of their way to tell me how much they hated it. I didn't like it, but the feeling was disappointment not hate. And you can't really hate on the performances. Still, I think of the whole thing as a cross between Behind the Candelabra and The Wrestler, but with little of the sex and wit.
Not only is it a great performance (and subtler than you'd think), but everything about Channing's physicality in this movie is SO SEXY even though he's not trying to be sexy.
Linking The Dilemma to ""a brush with Oscar" is a stretch beyond all stretches.
murtada, I think he did just the opposite.
Maybe this is the start of the rd to his 1st nomination just not for this.