The Whale (2022)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Charlie is in trouble. He's alone in a small Idaho apartment he can't leave. He teaches writing to online college kids from his laptop with the camera off, telling them it's broken. He binges on pizza and fried chicken and sweets, mostly delivered to his door by a faceless driver named Dan who he never sees. He hasn't been outside in years. Charlie has a complex life, one that we learn about over the next two hours, but the gist is this: a decade prior, he left his wife (and mother of their daughter) for a young male lover named Alan, who committed suicide due to religious guilt over his sexuality. Since then, Charlie's depression has led to binge eating and sloth to the point that he now weighs over 600 pounds. He's almost immobile, more or less glued to his sofa, and as of the start of this film, is in the throes of congestive heart failure. The film takes place over the course of one fateful week in his life.

He's got a few visitors, who mobilize the plot. There's a young man named Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a hopeful missionary determined to save the grotesque recluse; his church is the same one Alan belonged to. There's his friend and caregiver Liz (Hong Chau), a nurse who was also Alan's sister, who chastises Charlie for his self-destructive behavior while offering him whatever comfort she can. And then there's Ellie (Sadie Sink), a bitter and wicked young woman who is in fact Charlie's estranged daughter, who shows up because Charlie offers her money to spend time with him. He loves her unconditionally, and her indifference is only slightly mitigated by her desire for money. You see, when Charlie left his wife Mary (Samantha Morton), she took full custody of Ellie and forbade all contact. Oh yes, and Mary shows up in perhaps the film's most emotionally fraught confrontation.

For indeed, Samuel D. Hunter's screenplay (adapted from his own stage play) is essentially a series of confrontations. We learn incredible depth to these characters, and all revolve in and out with horrific new insights. Sometimes appallingly funny, other times devastatingly sad, their revelations finally help us better understand the mystery that is The Whale's titular protagonist. Charlie is, especially in Brendan Fraser's magnificent performance, the most unnervingly empathetic and optimistic person. He genuinely (and repeatedly) believes that people are really, truly good at heart and just want to connect honestly with each other. He wants to help the missionary divorce himself from the trappings of his church and just live faithfully; he wants Mary to stop drinking and forgive him (or herself); he wants Ellie to express her angst in healthier ways; he wants Liz to be free and live her best life on her own terms. The trouble is that Charlie is incapable of any of these things for himself: he's not being fully honest with anyone, he's not making any healthy choices whatsoever, and he is so addicted to self-pity and sorrow that he can't even imagine himself escaping his self-imposed doom.

And the ironies and cognitive dissonance only get worse, just as his intelligence, humor, and loving personality become more clear. He consistently tells the abominable Ellie she's an amazing person -- and she wrote, according to him, the best essay he's ever read -- but then, as she asks him, why doesn't he care enough about living to be around for her now? Why can't he heed his nurse and make healthy choices, if he so desperately wants to see Ellie shine? That's only one example, but each successive confrontation reveals more of these complexities.

A quick note on what has become the dominant discourse around this film: makeup, wigs, costumes, padded suits, and CGI are all tools used by filmmakers and actors to embody and portray characters. Always have been, always will be. Yes, it's good to talk about representation and be mindful and sensitive. But that doesn't precede or preclude the art from happening, and it shouldn't. So don't watch this film if you don't want to, but don't decry it for doing exactly what all performance art has done throughout history. Especially if you don't know what the film is doing with it.

Director Darren Aronofsky, one of my favorite directors, manages to do amazing work in this film with his actors (especially Hong Chau), with the production design (the whole film, with few minor exceptions, takes place in Charlie's apartment, but it never feels too staged or boring), and with his cinematographer Matthew Libatique. It's difficult to watch, both in terms of source material and thematic elements; Aronofsky tends to love psychological trauma in his films, and is used to generating an atmosphere of excess. I wouldn't have thought this was material appropriate for his aesthetic, but now describing it, I see it's exactly right for him. And, with the screenplay's use of Moby-Dick as something between allegory and allusion, it's just about perfect for me.