First seen masturbating as he watches online porn, Charlie (Brendan Fraser), the main character in The Whale, isn’t just morbidly obese; he is a lumbering leviathan of a man, so immensely fat that he can barely manoeuvre himself off his couch, let alone leave his apartment. He sweats profusely, vomits into dustbins and almost chokes on the junk food he gorges himself on. “Who would want me to be part of their life?” he asks plaintively toward the end of the film. Even his daughter calls him disgusting. Darren Aronofsky’s film is stagy and mawkish. Watching it you feel grossly manipulated, but the approach is undeniably effective.
Fraser was the star of films like The Mummy and George of the Jungle in the days when he was a more conventionally shaped leading man. Now, covered in layers of prosthetics, he gives one of those sad-eyed performances, like a dog with an injured paw begging for a bone, that many audiences will find very hard to resist. He’s already received an Oscar nod for Best Actor.
