The Whale (2022)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
Brendan Fraser is every bit worthy of the praise and awards consideration he is receiving for his performance. Truly unexpected and stunning work.
Not enough attention is being given to Hong Chau, who gives a supporting performance that is a wonderful counterbalance to Fraser’s work.
The film has its passionate supporters, and it is easy to get swept up in what Fraser has created on screen.
NO
The Whale is potentially deeply triggering for people who have struggled with their weight. And even with Fraser’s tremendous performance, the film lacks empathy and feels disdainful towards its main subject.
Bleak, sad, and quite difficult to watch.
The writing and direction seem to be on different pages, as if both see the same circumstance in completely different ways. The film suffers tremendously as a result.
OUR REVIEW
Let’s begin here: Brendan Fraser’s performance in The Whale is simply unforgettable and impossible to shake. His is a comeback of such grace, power, and surprising depth that this is the work that likely will define his career.
Fraser’s ability to generate empathy with a smile, a sorrowful reaction, or through the piercing truth present in his eyes makes his turn as Charlie, a 600-plus pound homebound man, something of a jarring, yet fascinating thing to watch unfold.
And herein lies the conundrum with Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. There is an incredible, powerful performance residing within a movie that doesn’t seem to truly know how it feels about its main subject. Are we to feel empathy? Compassion? Is Aronofsky critical of Charlie’s situation? Are we to look at him in disgust? There is a staggering imbalance in the perspectives thrown at us, and while I think Aronofsky believes we can judge or perhaps evaluate Charlie’s situation on our own merits, his opinions are not lost in the presentation. And those opinions get in the way, more often than not.
The screenplay, written by Samuel D. Hunter, who adapts this work from his 2012 stage play of the same name, feels like it could exist as a filmed play. The film has one main set, Charlie’s home, and we stay there because he is unable to leave. His weight largely confining him to a chair where his laptop, oxygen tanks, and other necessities are close at hand. At times, he struggles to stand with a walker and can occasionally summon the strength to walk down the hallway to the bathroom or other rooms in his house.
The myriad of visitors include his best friend and nurse Liz (Hong Chau), a pizza delivery man named Dan (Sathya Sridharan) who exchanges a nightly, all meat large pie for money in the mailbox. As an English professor, Charlie is the lone dark camera in a class full of students, unwilling to show himself. Unexpectedly, his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) arrives seemingly out-of-the-blue, while Thomas, a religious missionary (Ty Simpkins) returns time and again to try and share his faith, despite first catching Charlie pleasuring himself to gay porn.
That discovery of Charlie is our first impression of him, and I am not sure I can recall a more unflattering introduction to a character we are supposed to feel empathy for. It is the first of many questionable moments Aronofsky fixates on for viewers to ponder and consider.
Aronofsky never shies away from provocative content or storytelling, but is there not a better way to bring us into Charlie’s world? The issue here, of course, is not that Charlie is gay. Not at all that Charlie gets off to gay pornography. It is the way we find him that is instantly problematic. The camera first leers in, then slowly sneaks up behind him, before swinging out to show us Charlie nearing climax, gay porn on his laptop and then struggling to remove his hand from his pants when Thomas interrupts him. Charlie then immediately appears to be having a heart attack.
In other moments, the sound design turns up loud when Charlie eats a bucket of fried chicken. His chomping down on that large pizza sounds almost comical at times. And look, we get it. Charlie is morbidly obese and eating himself to death. But are we supposed to be laughing? Or feeling sorry for him? Shaking our head at what this emotional man has become?
Setting aside the inevitable montage of Charlie binge-eating and vomiting that arrives in the film’s third act, The Whale seems to take delight in the cavalcade of people being cruel or talking down to Charlie. No one sees him as a person of agency except Liz, played with a perfect balance of tough-love and endearing love by Chau. She knows the end is near for Charlie, and her connection to him would feel poignant as a moving undercurrent to the film’s storytelling if Aronofsky didn’t use those emotions as a way to have Hunter’s dialogue again remind everyone how sick, vulnerable, and beyond hope Charlie seems to be.
The best parts of The Whale are sadly those moments we never see. Only fleeting moments come and go in discussing Charlie’s life. Past decisions he has made, and the circumstances which brought him to his infirm and near-helpless state, never get enough life pumped into them. As a result, Charlie is reduced to little more than a failure at every turn. He’s reduced to someone who appears to lacks the ability to get over stuff that “stronger people” can find a way to work through.
But not this guy. Not Charlie. Not the 600-pounder who can apparently only find fleeting moments of escape when listening to a particular book report about his favorite novel, “Moby Dick,” (sigh) or when ingesting huge quantities of food, or trying to get himself off. Shouldn’t he, fictional or otherwise, deserve more than that?
Hunter’s writing certainly accentuates these issues, but Aronofsky seems both repulsed and disgusted while wanting us all to gawk at his subject. Sink’s moments with him, veering between a checked-out teenager who hates her parents, and her own disgust with her father’s physical stature, lead to lecture after lecture from her, delivered with disarming cruelty and potentially ruinous impact.
In short, The Whale is a lot and too much and not enough at the same time. As the movie played before me, I kept looking at Fraser’s eyes and hoping his remarkable work, anchored in a fat suit and prosthetics and CGI enhancements, could give me enough to find comfort in what I was witnessing. The only empathy present in the film is what Fraser can muster with a script that works against everything he is able to pull off in the film’s near two-hour running time.
I could be more critical, but I’ll stop there. The Whale is an uncomfortable film, and even if done properly it likely should be. However, the spectacle of all of this is about the only thing Aronofsky has time for. Fraser aims for so much more, which is why I think his performance remains so impressive in a film which lacks any hint of true empathy and understanding.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Written by: Samuel D. Hunter
Based on the stage play “The Whale” by Samuel D. Hunter
Release Date: December 9, 2022
A24