The Whale is the second movie in a row by director Darren Aronofsky that I have actively despised while watching and wanted to walk out on. His 2017 film mother! became so overwhelmingly intense in its third act and it’s nightmarish portrayal of helplessness suffered by the main character so accurately reflected the way I experience dreaming that it completely ruined the movie for me. I eventually came around on Aronofksy’s frank self-portrait of an artist literally destroying those in his orbit, and I now think mother! is a fine film. I’m not so sure that will happen with The Whale, however, and while eventually I figured out what the film was trying to do and say, I’m starting to wonder if my taste is beginning to break away from this filmmaker’s sensibilities.
The Whale begins as we watch Charlie (Brendan Fraser) - an extremely overweight online Creative Writing instructor - during an intensely personal moment. That moment is interrupted when New Life Church Missionary Thomas (Ty Simpkins) enters Charlie’s unlocked apartment unannounced (the door is unlocked all the time because Charlie is too obese to get up and open it for his constant visitors). This surprise rattles Charlie and irritates his congestive heart failure, which sends him spiraling into a coughing fit. We watch along with Thomas as Charlie struggles to breathe for a few agonizing minutes, respite only coming after he asks the young Christian boy to read an excerpt from an essay someone wrote about Moby Dick to the dying man. We then spend the rest of the movie’s running time watching Charlie slowly die, in fact.
We know he is dying because his caretaker (and semi-nurse and friend) Liz (Hong Chau, whose performance in The Menu is one of my favorites of the year) tells us so. He’ll be dead by the end of the week, she tells him, unless he gets to a hospital. He doesn’t. Partially because he’s embarrassed by his size, but also because he doesn’t want to continue living in the squalor that has become his life.
Instead he spends his week entertaining constant visits from three people: his estranged teenage daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), who wants to use her father in order to pass her English class (and get some money he says he’ll give her as well); Thomas, who thinks Charlie needs to get right with God before he shuffles off this mortal coil; and Liz, who simultaneously keeps him mentally healthy while physically destroying his body.
In between visits from this trinity we watch as Charlie deals with his trauma and depression (his boyfriend passed away before the events of the movie) by gorging himself on fatty foods and sugary beverages. The Whale is overwhelmingly graphic in its depiction of food addiction (most definitely a disease, just like any other addiction), and Aronofsky does not shy away from the misery this puts Charlie through. He doubles his pizza slices up and slathers them in ranch dressing. He vomits on himself. He cries and hates himself for it. It is truly harrowing stuff.
The issue I have with The Whale is that while Aronofsky keeps his technical style muted through the film (like his 2008 work The Wrestler, The Whale is largely devoid of the director’s usual camera and editing trickery), he keeps his penchant for large emotions and this detailed depiction of misery front and center. Every conversation is filled with platitudes bordering on Hallmark-ian mawkishness. Everyone in the film acts in a grand manner - perhaps a function of the material being written for the stage but also because Aronofsky wants to wring as much emotion from the audience as possible. Ellie is a teenage nightmare, going so far as to drug her father with Ambien so she can blow pot smoke in his face in rifle through his belongings), and Sink plays up this tweenage angst with a force blunt enough to bowl over Charlie’s 700lbs frame. Liz’s heart is in the right place with her tender care of Charlie until you realize she’s enabling his addiction by feeding him meatball subs while chastising him for having a blood pressure reading of 240/140. Thomas hounds Charlie about finding purpose in salvation even though Charlie clearly finds religion to be off-putting and faith an empty virtue. This contrast between the more subdued visual style Aronofsky applies here and the over-the-top depiction of Charlie’s suffering results in a difficult viewing.
It feels strange to admit I was turned off by the difficulty of watching The Whale, seeing as Aronofsky is a director who has rarely been subtle. Requiem For a Dream, his second film, contains depictions of heroin use and amphetamine addiction that are far more traumatic than the content shown in The Whale. That film, however, had a propulsive visual style and sequences of fantasy that worked in synchronicity with the grimy portrayal of its subject matter. The single-location, claustrophobic feel of The Whale (Aronofsky shot the film using 4:3 aspect ratio) traps you with Charlie and his misery.
You’ve probably heard that Fraser turns in the performance of his life in The Whale, and that is true. His innate softness helps us sympathize with Charlie, even when he’s being stubborn, literally risking his own life. Charlie still has a soft-spot for humanity, despite what he has been through, and Fraser is an inherently likeable actor so we immediately empathize with him. The supporting cast is in fine form as well. Chau is tasked with delivering some truly awkward exposition but shines in spite of that, and Simpkins offers solid support as a character who is more than he first appears.
Throughout The Whale I sat in constant judgment of every character on-screen, wanting to scream at them for acting the way they were. I was in legitimate misery watching them wallow in theirs. It wasn’t until later that I realize that’s exactly what Aronofsky wanted. The Whale is a movie that asks us to be as nonjudgmental and empathetic to everyone as our main character is. Charlie sees the good in people. I admire that the film takes this point of view. It’s one I happen to agree with, and it challenged my assumption that I meet that ideal and made me promise to myself that I would try harder from now on to do that. I’m glad the movie provoked that reaction from me, but it’s not a piece of work I will ever watch again.
Wow, thanks for such a descriptive write-up. I have been so intrigued by this one.