The Whale Review
★★★☆☆ A powerful dramatic showcase for its talented stars, Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale brazenly disregards your feelings with an unflinching but highly flawed examination of trauma and addiction.
Entombed in a 300-pound fat suit, Brandon Fraser plays Charlie, a reclusive forty-something-year-old English tutor whose grief-driven binge-eating has left him morbidly obese and close to death.
With his health failing and time running out, Charlie — against the advice of his conflicted best friend and carer, Liz (Hong Chau, The Menu) — attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink — Stranger Things), a troubled but bright young woman who bitterly resents her father for leaving years before.
The Whale is very similar in a number of ways to Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, the Mickey Rourke-starring story of a father’s quest for redemption in the eyes of his daughter. To this day, it’s the film I believe to be the divisive filmmaker’s best, an emotionally resonant drama that swaps his usual showy surrealism for something a little more grounded and real.
Aronofsky wants to put you in the same emotional mangle here, but he can’t because it’s nowhere near as well written. Playwright Samuel D. Hunter adapts his original work, a confined single-location stage production that translates pretty well to the screen. But the dialogue is poor across the board; exchanges between characters are so overwrought and over-written that it actively undermines the tension and dramatic heft the film is trying so hard to achieve.
Fraser is phenomenal in his big comeback role, a tender and emotionally investing performance that, on the surface, comes with the kind of physical commitment that usually guarantees all the awards.
Which it did. Shocker.
Thankfully praise for Fraser’s turn didn’t overshadow co-stars Chau and Sink, whose excellent supporting turns were rightfully also recognised during award season. Sink, in particular, delivers a remarkable performance, barely recognisable from her affable real self as a daughter so vicious and knowingly cruel you wish you could just reach through the screen and give her a good slap on poor Charlie’s behalf.
It’s no surprise The Whale divided as it did. Its portrayal of obesity and addiction is hard to swallow, a painful truth the film doesn’t sugarcoat to appease those who choose to believe this kind of lifestyle isn’t a problem. Had the delivery matched Aronofsky’s earlier, grittier work, this challenging but, at times, beautiful film could’ve delivered better as a rousing and cathartic release.
Originally published at michaelkenny.uk on June 6, 2023.
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