Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale,” adapted from the play by Samuel D. Hunter (who also wrote the screenplay), about an obese man reckoning with his life over the course of a week, is a morally and emotionally messy film. It is so challenging to puzzle out the muddled messaging of this project that ultimately it begs the question: does our cinematic entertainment have to be cleanly comprehended? Is it possible to exist in an uncomfortable gray area (which is reflected even in the color palette of the dim apartment where the entirety of the film is set)?
This uneasiness is a natural extension of Aronofsky’s last film, 2017’s “Mother!”, which was an aggressively confrontational piece that employed Biblical archetypes and shocking violence in order to make a fist-pounding statement about climate catastrophe. “The Whale” isn’t nearly so emphatic, and is far more earnest (for better or for worse), but it slots neatly into Aronofsky’s interest in physical and emotional suffering and degradation as a means of spiritual transcendence (see also: “Requiem for a Dream,” “The Wrestler,” “Black Swan”).
In “The Whale,” Brendan Fraser plays Charlie, a morbidly obese online writing instructor confined to his apartment in what seems to be a dreary stretch of Idaho. Charlie is suffering from congestive heart failure, and over the course of a week, as his best friend Liz (Hong Chau) a nurse, implores, demands and shouts at him to seek medical attention, he reckons with some of the unfinished business of his life while committing a slow suicide. He reaches out to his estranged daughter, the prickly Ellie (Sadie Sink), and by extension, her mother, Mary (Samantha Morton). A young missionary, Thomas (Ty Simpkins), keeps stopping by, hoping to save his soul.
“The Whale” doesn’t quite conceal its stage origins, relegated to the single setting, which is captured claustrophobically by Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique. The camerawork, mimicking the movement of people in the apartment, brings some sense of cinematic flow, but as characters enter and exit Charlie’s space, the theatrical DNA cannot be denied.
As Liz barks reprimands while simultaneously enabling Charlie’s food addiction, and as Ellie demands material rewards that reveal her desire to repair the lost connection with her father, while Thomas attempts to figure out his own salvation, it becomes clear that the only person saving Charlie’s soul is Charlie himself, and he just might save theirs too, in his own destruction. His earnest belief in how amazing people are is tempered by the bleakness of the situation, but over the course of the film, Charlie’s purity renders him a kind of sainted figure, an angelic martyr of sorts.
But how are we supposed to feel about the sainted Charlie when we have to witness his abjection? Is the frustration and fear with which others regard him reveal the film’s inherent fatphobia, or is it asking us to confront our own notions about fatness and food? That’s for the audience to deduce on our own, though the horror with which others react to Charlie’s appearance (his online students, his pizza delivery guy) tips the film more toward fatphobia than away from it.
But then, there is Fraser, who through the prosthetics, both physical and computer-generated, delivers a performance suffused with warmth, empathy and love that cannot be denied. It is a performance of an emotional honesty that pierces through the layers of contrived fiction surrounding the core of the story: the theatrical origins, the digital fat suit. The honesty he brings to Charlie neutralizes the spiky defensiveness with which the trio of angry women arm themselves; it allows Thomas to lay down his mission to save Charlie’s soul.
“Write me something honest,” Charlie demands of his students. “The Whale” may not be as honest as Charlie demands, but Fraser is, and that is the film’s saving grace.
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‘THE WHALE’
2.5 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: R for language, some drug use and sexual content.
Running time: 1:57
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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