Movie Reaction: The Whale

Formula: Heavyweights * Requiem for a Dream

 

Darren Aronofsky is a director I just can't get into. He has a special skill with performers. No one puts an actor through the ringer quite like him, whether it's Ellen Burstyn going through drug-fueled mania in Requiem for a Dream or Natalie Portman going through obsession-fueled mania in Black Swan. I have trouble connecting with his ugly take on humanity, no matter how allegorical he makes it. That made The Whale a troubling prospect. On the one hand, I was sure it would be career best work from Brendan Fraser. On the other hand, Aronofsky is not my first thought of a director to delicately handle the story of a 600-lb man. Frankly, The Whale delivered exactly what I expected, for better and worse.

 

The Whale is an adaptation of a play about a man, Charlie (Brendan Fraser) who has let himself balloon up to 600-lbs in the years since the death of his boyfriend. It's pretty much slow suicide. He can tell he doesn't have long left and won't spend any money for health care beyond the help he gets from his best friend, Liz (Hong Chau), who is a nurse who checks in on him. In what appears to be his final days he decides to call his daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), who he hasn't seen since the disastrous end of his marriage 8 years before. She hates Charlie, but he convinces her to visit on the promise or giving her his inheritance. Ellie wants to see him more than she'll admit as well. And the movie pretty much carries on as a collection of scenes set around the apartment with Charlie, Liz, Ellie, Ty Simpkins as a Christian missionary who is determined to make a difference with Charlie, and a few other people on the fringes.

 

Unfortunately, my thoughts of The Whale line up with a lot of stage adaptations. The performances are really great but the rest of it doesn't translate as well. I'm fine with Fraser winning every award imaginable for how he doesn't disappear under all the makeup and prosthetics. I just hear his laugh once and I'm reminded of how much I miss him in those dumb 90s movies. At the same time, there's so much sadness in there too. He plays a full character despite what could turn into a gimmick. Sadie Sink plays her anger, pain, and sadness so well as conflicting forces. And, I'm beginning to love how Hong Chou can just show up to any movie like she's always been there. She feels the least like and character and the most like a person of anyone in this movie.

 

Certain play aspects of this I don't mind. Like, being bound to the apartment for the whole movie makes sense. Charlie is in self-imposed exile. Where it loses me is the checklist feel of the movie. After a while, I started asking which combination of characters I hadn't seen together so I could know what scenes were left. It also started to bother me how every character talked like they were making a point rather than actually having a conversation. Aronofsky has some thoughts about a few topics, religion in particular, and he'd be damned if he allowed a character to let you forget it.

 

I don't know where I land on the obesity issue. I think the film is making a point that's larger than "fat people are bad". Virtually the same movie could've been made about, say drugs (check his filmography) with the same beats. It's more about the overindulgence as a destructive act. Aronofsky really likes to revel in it though. This movie wants you to realize how disgusting Charlie is in a way that feels excessive. That's how Aronofsky works though.

 

Depending on what you watch movies for, The Whale has anywhere from little to quite a lot to offer. To me, it felt like a performance-delivery-machine more than a fully rounded film. Aronofsky’s tendency to shout the quiet parts has never endeared me to his films, and The Whale continues that.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend