Movie Review : The Whale (2022)
The triumphant, Oscar-winning performance of Brendan Fraser, a once typical Apollonian Hollywood actor brought down from Mt. Olympus and back among the living by age and bad luck, is all that we talk about when we talk about the movie The Whale. But Fraser's feel good story concealed another, less wholesome (and potentially more interesting) return : the sometimes brilliant and sometimes ridiculous Darren Aronofsky who hadn't directed anything worth mentioning since the shambolic Mother!
But I watched The Whale and understood immediately why it worked the way it did. It's a terrible movie.
The Whale tells the story of Charlie (Fraser) and overweight and reclusive online English teacher who is eating his way into his grave. Abandoned by almost everyone except his departed ex-boyfriend’s sister Liz (Hong Chau), Charlie doesn’t see a point to either kill himself or get better until his psychopathic estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) mysteriously walks back into his life. He still doesn't want to do anything about himself, but at least he wants to make things right with her. But only on his own terms.
Charlie’s last days of inhumanity
Adapted from a 2012 stage play by Samuel D. Hunter, The Whale falls under under the vague and ominous label of psychological drama. It's a movie "for adults" that is unbothered with the artifices of modern cinema. By design, it has a sober and unspectacular aesthetic by design and explores the complexity of human emotions. I have nothing against psychological drama, but it is used by movie like The Whale to obfuscate the fact that it's the story of a terminal asshole tyrannizing everyone who loves him with his condition.
Whatever empathy I'm supposed to feel for Charlie is only superficial. I'm supposed to only see the morbidly obese guy and not the fucking wretched dictator underneath who subjects the last people who care about him to the spectacle of his slow decay and he does make a fucking spectacle out of it. Binge eating scenes in this movie are raw and disturbing. Brendan Fraser wings it and he's fucking great at what he's supposed to do, but it's really difficult to overcome the suffering it inflicts on other characters.
I know what you're going to say: but Charlie is heartbroken and has no self-esteem. No one understands the depth of his despair. Guess what? He also has a fucking teenage daughter. Charlie seems to think that dying and leaving her with a down payment for house is a better life plan for her than fixing himself and being her fucking dad, despite Ellie asking him to do that over and over. Also, if he didn't have any self-esteem, he would do what other people told him to. That man is an ego monster and a vulnerable narcissist.
The Whale is a disconnected, self-congratulatory and performative spectacle of empathy in the worst possible way. It's not that far removed from that horrible TLC show My 600 lbs life. It's the story of a man who turned himself into an altar to his own suffering and forces everyone who loves him to pray to it. I mean, it's not poorly written or filmed at all, it's just fucking wretched. It's a bullshit, disconnected art school type of film that makes everyone hate people who went to art school.
But what about the metaphor, Ben?
It's there alright. It's not all that abstract or symbolic. It's pretty obvious. Charlie and Ellie are linked through their reading (and enjoyment?) of Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick. So, I guess Charlie turned himself into a mythical whale that Ellie would have to symbolically kill to go one with her life? That would make the Christian Evangelical missionary Thomas (Ty Simpkins) Ishmael, the witness of this transformative mythical battle between a deadbeat dad and his angry daughter.
See, it's kind of simple. The Whale is not complicated or dense. It just thinks it is.
Another thing I don't understand with this movie is Charlie's fixation on authenticity in writing. He demands it out of his students. He is averse to the idea that academia, literature and authenticity can work together and is obsessed with everyone expressing their true selves through their essays. I thought it was disingenuous for a man who refuses to acknowledge his situation and lives in a melancholic bubble with his dead boyfriend, who is much more important to him than any living character.
I mean, how can a man who turned his back on his own life can lecture people about authenticity? What secret insight does his despair hold? That's a question The Whale never really answers "because we're supposed to figure it out for ourselves" or whatever. But being sad and melancholic doesn't make you necessarily deep or wise. Especially when you're surrounded with people who want you to live. It's the type of superficial thematic wrinkle I find pretty fucking insulting in a movie.
*
For a movie based around the idea of empathizing with a morbidly obese person, The Whale does a pretty terrible job at it. I hope anti-grossophobia militants hate this movie as much as I did for turning a condition into such a superficial and pathetic spectacle. Brendan Fraser is fucking great and I guess he deserves his Oscar (although I would've probably given it to Colin Farrell), but his performance is absolutely lost in this disconnected shit show of a movie. Fuck you, Darren Aronofsky. You suck.
