the controversial Darren Aronofsky returns to the fray after his controversial film Mother! with The Whale (The whale), based on the play written by Sam D. Hunter. The text is brutal, but what is most attractive about the tape is undoubtedly the acclaimed return of Brendan Fraser in a leading role of this depth (it has earned him the critics’ award and the Golden Globe nomination).
Not surprisingly, it seems that it will become the film that marks a before and after in his career: a mass idol in the late 90s and early 2000s with roles in blockbusters like George of the Jungle, The Mummy or Crash to a slow decline and now, in 2023, a rebirth giving life to Charlie, the protagonist of this complex, sad story, but at the same time tremendously human.
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Trailer for The Whale
In The Whale they present him to us as an ostracist person, cloistered and prey to his own body and physical condition. Charlie is a morbidly obese person who suffers from a heart problem: he is on the verge of collapsing and it is increasingly difficult for him to move his voluminous outline.
He makes a living teaching English literature online, but he is very worried that his students cannot see him through their webcams and only Liz, a nurse with whom he shares some of the saddest passages from his past, will She still worries about visiting him often and monitoring his blood pressure.
Charlie has a teenage daughter from a frustrated relationship with whom he tries to reconnect, although she doesn’t make it easy for her. However, he is a compulsive optimist who manages to see the best in everyone and knows that she has the talent, intelligence and even the brilliance to stand out from the rest.
Unfortunately for him, time is playing against him and bingeing on junk food only brings him closer to an inevitable end.
self destruction and redemption
Aronofky’s cinema is never simple. He has proven to be a creator who is concerned with subtext, which goes beyond what the words say, and the characters tormented by addiction, faith or themselves and their own delusions.
Here he brings us a marginal character, separated from society who tries to expiate a guilt and go through a duel that leads him to mortify himself in a painful way. The degree of pathos that Charlie achieves is such that there are moments when watching the film is even painful.
Row in your favor an extremely realistic characterization that moves on the margins of the intolerable: it plays the limit of what an average spectator will be able to fit. And that’s why Fraser’s work is so good. It could have fallen into parody or ridicule with tremendous ease but the audience won’t have a hard time empathizing with a man who is broken inside and full of pain.
In addition to having an overwhelming lead performance, Fraser is very well surrounded by few characters but excellently represented by Sadie Sink (Stranger Things), Samantha Morton (The Walking Dead) and a moving Hong Chau who became known in A Big Life and shines with its own light on this occasion (it may be his best work so far).
The Whale It comes up in an overflowing final section in which it is revealed what has led this man to find himself in such a situation and to what extent he is a person aware that he is killing himself in the most horrible way imaginable, without leaving to think of others, while continuing to try to make the world a better place. He is a doomed man…by himself.
Aronofsky makes the most of his situation and turns each move into a feat, narrating everything from almost a single place and with small but very significant spaces.
The parallels with “Moby Dick” are one of the reasons for the script and the title given to the work and now the film. It is very hard, but it is worth it. Stay away those with a delicate stomach.
