It has been a rough 24 hours but I wanted to get back on track and I needed a distraction, so I started writing. Brendan Fraser’s powerhouse performance is a rising tide that lifts all ships in Darren Aronofsky’s latest, The Whale.
An online English teacher who has become morbidly obese in the wake of his lover’s death tries to repair a broken relationship with his daughter as his health issues worsen.
It has been a few weeks since I saw this one, but it has a kind of gravity that has stuck with me ever since. Even after seeing multiple films in its wake, I still have to circle back to Aronofksy and Samuel Hunter’s story of living with regret, shame, and guilt, and what it’s like to try and process all that at the end of the road.
Brendan Fraser is every bit as incredible as advertised, taking on a very demanding role as Charlie. He did a magnificent job honing in on the most human elements and bringing those to the surface in the face of some very obvious challenges. The way he both literally and figuratively has to wrestle with the magnitude of his character was incredibly impressive and he left me absolutely floored. His performance alone is well worth the price of admission and he deserved that 15-minute standing ovation he got at Cannes.
I’ve heard some chirping out there about this film being fat-phobic or body-shaming, but I found that to be disingenuous when you actually sit down and watch it. Hunter’s screenplay does a fantastic job of layering the lead character in meaningful ways, rather than using him as a punchline. We can see the sting of those words and the self-deprecation in the character. Hunter wrote the original play as well and his story’s primary focus is to make sure that the lead is viewed as a sympathetic, fully-formed person rather than just “The Whale”.
Sure, some of the dialogue is very harsh but context matters, and understanding that is a crucial framework for digesting it all. Even when Charlie is on the receiving end of something venomous, it’s not a gotcha-type moment. That’s why the essay on ‘Moby Dick’, which exists within the framework of the story, is particularly poignant and meaningful to the character. It aims to challenge the notion that Herman Melville’s novel is really about the whale despite its fame as the iconic creature. Instead, this opinion focuses on the human element, using the subject of the book as a metaphor that asks the audience to look beyond “The Whale” in this film and connect with the human story in a more meaningful and reflective way. That’s why I find the dismissive nature of some of those aforementioned comments so off-base.
There are, of course, valid criticisms to be had here. Aronofsky and Matthew Libatique’s creative choices when it came to displaying the character could be misconstrued as exploitative and insulting, especially early on in the film, but I don’t think that is the case. It certainly leans into their darker inclinations that we have seen in their other collaborations like Black Swan, Mother!, and Requiem for a Dream, but showcasing the character in that light isn’t meant to make him out as a monster or to vilify him but rather to amplify the sorts of negative stigmas that already exist as a point of contrast. In a nutshell, I see it as “here’s the way many people would view this character” now “here’s the real human being that exists outside of the stereotypical realm”.
Not everything translates so well from stage to screen. It often feels like watching a stage show as the cast is tiny and the whole film unfolds in one cramped apartment. I like the intimacy that was provided but it made the moody teenager stuff feel much more out of place as those arcs are forced to play out within the confines of Charlie’s home due to the necessity of the script and the shoot.
That is not a condemnation of Sadie Sink or Ty Simpkins in their roles. Sink plays Ellie, Charlie’s daughter, and Simpkins plays Thomas, a bit of a religious fanatic who ran away from home. Individually, I understand the functions the characters have but they are both just a bit heavy-handed. One of the two would have been enough, and having their own little side arc detracts from the film’s most vital area.
Hong Chau is fantastic and her relationship with Charlie as his defacto caretaker, Liz, is the most meaningful relationship in the film. They are great together and as you learn more about why they are close, the more valuable that relationship becomes which is also why the other plot lines feel like they are taking away from the thing that the audience primarily cares about. Chau does such a wonderful job balancing her love and her frustration with Charlie that I wanted more of that because it is that good. I’m looking forward to seeing what Chau does next because she had a stellar 2022.
Rob Simonsen’s original score is subtle. It doesn’t beat you over the head or dictate scenes, but it is excellent at helping guide a story that doesn’t have the benefit of robust location filming. The thing I didn’t expect to jump out at me was the sound design. Again, I think it was more impactful out of necessity but I don’t think that should count against it. When the film originally released, I was surprised to see it playing in Dolby, but then I saw it and understood.
Recommendation: See it for the central performances from Fraser and Chau, but Fraser’s roaring comeback alone is worth the ticket price.
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