I’m gonna cry! I just know it. This morbidly obese man is built for a tear-jerking tale at the hands of the disarming auteur, Darren Aronofsky. But I’m also here for Brendan Fraser’s personal redemption, as The Whale is the movie that’s sent Fraser on a whirlwind interview tour where he’s been reflecting on how shocked he was to realise how adored he is – I’m looking forward to spending a little of my time among the Brenaissance. I hope my heart can handle all these emotions.
Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is a big fat guy, living in a dirty apartment, where he eats like Pac-Man. At the beginning of the movie, Charlie experiences chest tightness, and his long-time friend and reluctant nurse, Liz (Hong Chau), says that he seriously needs to go to the hospital or else he’s looking at a week to live. Charlie refuses, but wants to make an effort to reconnect with his wayward seventeen-year-old daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) instead, bribing her to spend time with him after she makes it very clear that she finds him disgusting. We never leave Charlie’s apartment, as we watch him struggle to move around, interact with unexpected visitors, and linger on losing a past love, which led to this self-contempt and crippling food addiction.
There’s something about food addiction that is so sad to me, possibly because I can see food as a coping comfort for myself, and for my family as well. It shouldn’t be a shock to learn that from an early age, us males at least, learn that the most basic surges of pleasure reside in the tip of our dicks and the tip of our tongues, and many self-guidance educators will talk about harnessing these two desires, so they don’t control you. Food addiction is not like alcoholism, because you don’t need drink to survive, but we do need food, so the addiction feels like a warped breakdown of what should be a beneficial system. And I guess unlike sex addiction, where at least that can be social, the resulting obesity cannot be hidden, and it’s isolating, as the manifestation of the behaviour to numb the pain on the inside becomes unavoidable on the outside. What this movie gets right is that Charlie is a vision – Fraser has undergone an impeccable transformation through costume and make-up, with glistening sweat in most places to make it feel as if you can nearly smell him through the screen. Expectedly, the character of Charlie is aware of the destructive condition he is in, almost always only mustering ‘sorry’ in explanation, as an all-encompassing apology for the burden he’s become through not looking after himself. I was doing pretty well through The Whale, as it was only when Charlie started doubling pizza slices to shovel into his mouth, that I got a real pang in my heart for this guy – I had to look away, as Charlie spiraled into a binge session, putting chips in bread thereafter, until he spewed. He was offset by a horrified look from the pizza guy, who, look, what did he expect when he drops off two pizzas a day to Charlie’s house who won’t open the door – maybe he was just expecting a shut-in, but it’s his fault he wasn’t more prepared for all types of sad. Since this movie ends up struggling to be about Charlie’s belief in the kindness of people, and valuing honesty above all else, I don’t know why the pizza delivery guy couldn’t have stayed an unexpected friendly sod, and something else could’ve set off Charlie instead. Suffice to say, there are elements of this story that could’ve been sharper I feel, attaching stronger to theme, and surrounding the well-played depiction of Charlie eating himself to death.
Honestly, I don’t completely understand the point of the missionary scenes – in fact, these are the moments where I could tune out, regroup, and one could probably hit the bathroom. Thomas (Ty Simpkins) assures Liz that he won’t be bringing the same homophobia from the church that she’s experienced before, and he confirms an enlightened thinking to Ellie, admitting to his own sins with drug use and theft that’ve forced him away from home, but in his final scene, he still suggests that maybe God turned his back on Charlie and his former partner, Alan, because they were gay. The scene allows Charlie to fight back, proud of the most loving moments of his life, but it doesn’t do much for Thomas, I’m afraid. Similarly, Ellie is almost too evil – she’s a caricature of evil. I don’t know if it’s Sadie Sink’s interpretation of the character, or if it’s how it’s written on the page, but her quick movements distracted me, and there’s neither a sign of a hurt little girl under a tough exterior, or a natural evil built into her core – her characterisation is a fuzzball to me, and if Charlie and her mother hadn’t debated it out, I don’t think I would’ve given her another thought. In early scenes, I was pleading for The Whale to give us the context to Charlie and Ellie’s father/daughter relationship, and it eventually comes, but I thought I needed it earlier to help make sense of Ellie’s disposition, but it doesn’t really matter – as what becomes a pretty standard line for this movie, I don’t understand Ellie at all.
Samantha Morton is brilliant. I betcha everyone else is starting off by stating how great Brendan Fraser is, but we do things a little different around here at Today Junior 😂 Along with a short spot in She Said, (and since I’m currently catching up on her part The Walking Dead), Morton can confirm the party don’t start ‘til she walks in… when her scenes come, the project gets better. Hong Chau has also had a very admirable year, playing the sharp and composed maître d’ in The Menu, and displaying a lovely empathetic edge in The Whale – I’m very glad to sing her praises. And yes, welcome back Brendan Fraser. It’s exciting, every year, when an obscure name gets recognised among the best performances, allowing the masses to praise their moment in the sun for the joys they’ve brought about through their entire career. For me, Brendan Fraser is George of the Jungle; a movie watched repeatedly in my household during my childhood days 😍 It seems Fraser has had a very hard time of it away from Hollywood, and even in interviews, he talks like he’s always about to cry – he may’ve long thought poorly of himself, so it’s almost meta that he’s the one to take on this role, and crush it so. It’s sometimes hard to see the man beyond the fat suit, but Charlie comes with a lot of range, and Fraser is perfectly sad, sympathetic, and hopeless when the time calls for it. Just trying to emote conditionally, while simultaneously faking heart palpations probably requires a lot of acting skill 😄 As the movie goes on, I think you realise that Charlie isn’t a great guy, regardless of his addiction. He probably could’ve done more to make amends with his daughter before this week, and he did leave her when she was eight because his life took a change. He’s not the loner I thought he might be, and maybe he hasn’t realised he’s got a family that once cared for him and could do again. He’s also been horrible to Liz, in hiding his financials while she bends over backwards to aid him. His addiction is obviously debilitating, but it doesn’t excuse all these slights.
After watching The Whale, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? still holds first place for the most heart-wrenching depiction of an overweight person in my book. But The Whale is super clever in that it transposes the relationship between Moby Dick’s Ahab and Moby Dick into a father-and-daughter story where the daughter has been irrevocably hurt by the father, thinking cruel retaliation might absolve her hardship. It’s like those smart and delightful high school comedies in that respect (10 Things I Hate About You from Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Clueless from Jane Austen’s Emma), taking a classic moral and updating it to a modern setting – I appreciate that, and I couldn’t avoid being touched by Charlie’s goal to quell his daughter’s disconnection before he goes. I thought The Whale was going to do a Babylon by overexplaining itself for a while, but it does just enough to stay under that threshold – it gives a summary of the themes in Moby Dick with the perspective of setting up the story it wants to tell, and that’s forgivable. But when you think ‘whale’ in literary terms, where does your brain automatically go anyway? Jonah and the Whale? Perhaps, Pinocchio? For me, I already had Moby Dick in my mind as a potential parable once I’d seen this movie’s poster, so it wasn’t a surprise, and I was more focused on how the movie was going to approach it 🤨 Through Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! and from what I’ve gleaned from conversation around his Requiem for a Dream (which I’m yet to see), I was expecting eventually The Whale would ramp up the fast lane, playing for shock value to maximum effect, but I found The Whale to be quite a tame as an adaptation of an original play, in reality. But I do have more nitpicks surrounding the groundwork to get to moments where the movie wants us to experience optimal emotional empathy – Charlie’s big barreling line, about wanting to know he’s at least done one good thing with his life, is a little hollow since we only really skirt around the path, pain, and perspective behind what’s actually caused his eating addiction. And if Charlie’s students did complain to get him fired, do you think he’d be able to have another session with them? At the very least, the movie could’ve shown that half his students weren’t in attendance for the last lecture because they were highly offended. It’s also a coinkidink that Charlie is a teacher and is able to project the honesty he loves so passionately from Ellie’s eight-year-old essay into his work. These are small contrivances perhaps, but as it’s the movie’s job to harness the story, these are also small indications that the story doesn’t know what it’s doing. Ultimately still, apart from the aforementioned What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, I don’t know where else you can go for an inspection on food addiction in a cinematic setting – the scene with Charlie and the chocolate bars also gave me the feels. Despite an uncertainty about the efficacy of the whole thing, The Whale still touched by heart, and so it’s a positive result from me.
3.5
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