Thar, it blows
Director Darren Aronofsky gets back to this sadistic ways with an Oscar-bait performance rooted in humiliation.
The Whale
Director: Darren Aronofsky • Writer: Samuel D Hunter, based on his play
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Samantha Morton
USA • 1hr 57mins
Opens Hong Kong March 9 • IIB
Grade: C
Never let it be said that director Darren Aronofsky has any kind of empathy or sympathy or basic respect for his characters. Ever since he lurched onto the stage with Pi in 1998 he’s gone from mean to cruel to nasty in varying combinations while somehow hypnotising us all into believing no, no. He’s a deep thinker, he’s not a sadist. This is intellectual filmmaking we have here. He’s not torturing anyone. Well, fuck that. The Whale puts a stamp on what’s been bubbling for 25 years. Aronofsky is mean-spirited and for no other reason than because he can. He’s a storytelling bully, and I don’t need this horseshit.
By now we all know Oscar nominee Brendan Fraser stars as Charlie, a morbidly obese English teacher who lives in isolation, with only his best friend Liz (Hong Chau, who’s way, way, way better than this), a nurse, dropping in to check on him every day. They share a trauma, so they connect. But she’s also an enabler. More on that later.
The Whale, based on screenwriter Samuel D Hunter’s play (no idea if this works better on stage), is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, with a strong Jesus vein running not too far beneath its blubbery surface – and by that I mean both weepy and the fat suit Fraser dons. Thematically it may seem distinct, but scratch the surface and it’s just Aronofsky heaping the same contemptuous, judgey abuse on Charlie as he did on The Woman (mother!), on Nina (Black Swan), on Randy (The Wrestler) and on everyone (Requiem for a Dream). Even Noah gets his, in a way, in Noah.
But don’t call him fat
The Whale unfolds over in the weeks leading up to Charlie’s inevitable death. Liz tries to convince him to see a doctor, but he refuses in part due to the related costs he can’t afford and partly to the crippling shame he’s sure would be the result of venturing out. He keeps his webcam off during his online classes, and the only other person he talks to, Dan the Pizza Guy, is through the door. He leaves money in the mail box. (So, his cash falls from the sky?) Barging into his life, first, is Thomas (Ty Simpkins, the haunted kid in Insidious), a hardcore Christian missionary who wants to show him why he’s not a horrible person for being gay as well as fat. Later comes his daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink, Stranger Things), estranged and angry, from whom he’s trying to buy affection. She’s still pissed that he up and left her and her mother Mary (Samantha Morton) nine years earlier for one of his students. So let’s review: Charlie is fat, gay, poor, and has a history of sexual misconduct? Okay, he deserves what the gets.
The films spends two interminable hours bobbing and weaving around issues of honesty, faith, perception, forgiveness and redemption – and none of it for Charlie. Liz brings him greasy meatball subs as a demonstration of her stellar nursing skills, bratty (not complex, bratty) Ellie calls him disgusting to his face, when Dan the Pizza Guy expresses revulsion at finally seeing Charlie it leads to binge eating. It’s possible some fat people eat to console themselves, but plenty are just fat. Without congestive heart failure. The point is the range of fat people – like all people – isn’t where Aronofsky’s interest lies. It’s in making Charlie the one to be sorry for everything about him – his sexuality, his size, his pain. DOP Matthew Libatique (A Star is Born, Venom) takes every opportunity to linger on Charlie’s girth, absorbing his grossness and justifying Aronofsky’s contempt. The Whale makes Charlie’s essential being about us, not him. It’s not much different from throwing out the defensive “Not all white people/men/priests” argument and so making it about you. Da fuq you talkin’ about Darren?
Most of The Whale’s buzz has revolved around Fraser’s “revelatory” performance, signalling a professional renaissance. Okay, let’s make one thing clear. This performance is not a revelation. Anyone who’s watched any of the films in Fraser’s 30-year career knows he can act: School Ties, Twenty Bucks, George of the Jungle (no shit, comedy is hard), Gods and Monsters (opposite Ian bloody McKellen), No Sudden Move and yeah, The Mummy. The only other truly great adventurer-lover to hit screens after 1970 was Harrison Ford, and Fraser’s half the reason that film was a huge hit. Fraser does what he can with the material in The Whale, but most of it relies on him crying or apologising or being belittled. It’s not much of a challenge. The rest of the buzz surrounds the fat suit he wore in lieu of the production hiring a fat actor. Maybe it’s for the best. Fat people have enough crap to deal with in real life. Why add to it by volunteering to be humiliated by Aronofsky? — DEK