SIngli6's Movie Review of The Whale (2022)

A Fridge Too Far
SIngli6 - wrote on 02/07/23

Darren Aronofsky has always trafficked in extreme scenarios and grotesque images to convey either addiction or obsession, depending on the film. His scripts would be comic in how OTP they are if they weren't bolstered by flourishes of hyper-intense editing, sound design, score, and photography. I know this because The Whale lacks many of those flourishes until its final act, where they arrive with all the enthusiasm of a student late for a (video) lecture. That's not a slight against the look and sound of the film; it's fine. It's Aronofsky at his most impartial, which makes the extremely repulsive dramatic beats of the film - including but not limited to heart attack masturbation, Brendan Fraser inhaling pizzas, Brendan Fraser vs gravity, and Sadie Sink being the world's most terrible teenager, if not person - hilarious. The filmmaking doesn't mix with the story being told, that's the problem.

I don't imagine too many people would legitimately object to the film's framing of morbid obesity as bad. No sane person would consider Charlie's lifestyle and body shape anything other than an illness or malformation. It is perhaps condescending at times, certainly. The scene where Brendan Fraser cannot pick up a key because of his extreme corpulence has the same feel as that episode of The Simpsons where Homer becomes obese. The fat suit prosthetic is not at all convincing, though I don't dispute the need for it. I can think of no working actor who is Charlie's size, and even if there was, there'd be something perverse about ensuring they remained that size throughout production, like enabling a drug addiction. What IS extraordinarily offensive in the film's messaging, though, is its strong and seemingly intentional message that cyberbullying at worst is an authentic expression of the self, and at best an act of charity.

The elephant, or whale, in the room is the matter of Brendan Fraser's acting. Is he good? Of course he is. Not Oscar winning material, but perhaps Oscar nominee material. He makes a character that is a near-saint feel real. The stagey script always pushes these anguished declarations from Charlie of how much of a martyr he is. Fraser has to fight against a narrative pull toward a sort of Christ for fat people, countering the resistible impression left from scene after scene of self-pity.