The Whale Review: Man as Abject Horror
Brendan Fraser manages to partially save the sinking ship that is The Whale.
The Whale is an exercise in endurance both on and off screen. How much longer can Charlie (Brendan Fraser) endure his all consuming body, and how much longer can the viewer sit through it?
This abject notion places The Whale comfortably in the rest of director Darren Aronofsky’s filmography, whose style has become synonymous with cringe-inducing grotesqueries. Traumatic depictions of children being eaten, monstrous transformations from human to animal; there is little Aronofsky will not show the audience. However, while these haunting experiences have previously proved satisfying in their thought provoking thematic ambiguity, it is difficult to call The Whale a worthwhile watch when the viscerally disgusting viewing experience amounts to a kiddie pool of depth rather than an ocean of nuance.
Opening on Charlie masturbating to gay porn with a resulting heart attack, the film immediately aims to build empathy for the protagonist. Yet, in a move that is sadly repeated throughout, rather
than viewing Charlie from an empathetic angle, the audience is forced into a voyeuristic position of awe. One does not watch Charlie and feel sympathy, they watch in silent horror while thinking “thank god that isn’t me.” This is the first of many flounders The Whale suffers from. In its confusing blend of Aronofsky’s style and poor representation of disordered eating, The Whale struggles to build a cohesive image of Charlie that leaves the audience undecided on wanting to engage with the character or shield their eyes whenever on screen.
This is perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the film: Charlie is a spectacle. His fatness is portrayed as truly, irrevocably appalling. “I’m disgusting!” he yells, and everyone in the room agrees. By equivicating fatness to the epitome of human failure, The Whale succeeds in making the audience squirm at the abject horror that is supposed to be an empathetic protagonist, while providing the most demeaning representation of fatness in recent memory.
The formal elements only amplify this terrible representation. The camera often spins around Charlie, giving him a gravitational pull that highlights his depressing stillness in relation to other characters. The bellowing score plays only when “the whale” himself struggles to stand. As a governing tool, Charlie is a dominant force, one that is the heart and soul of the very film that relentlessly pokes and prods in the cruelest ways imaginable.
Outside of the representation of fatness, the cinematography does little to excite or engage. While a static camera for minutes at a time might be boring, it rightfully gives Fraser and crew the room to shine a light on this deeply depressing project. After learning of his quickly approaching death, Charlie looks to break his cycle of self destruction by reuniting with his daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), a desire harshly opposed by his caretaker Liz (Hong Chau). The cast is rounded out by a young missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins) who seeks to save Charlie through the word of God. Meaning, the film introduces a handful of themes through its characters. Saving. Religion. False hope. Truth. These are all vague concepts the film clunkily stumbles over with dialogue manifesting as blunt thematic development and a litany of melodramatic insults. Rarely did the words entering my ears spark any form of emotional engagement whenever it was not Fraser delivering them. Meaning, for a film with seemingly so much to say, the unsubtle elements are never woven together naturally by way of story. Instead, exposition is shoved down our throats and grandiose declarations are given with no restraint, developing an ecosystem of ideas that never harmonize.
It is in this thematic failure, the loose conjoining of disparate thoughts, where The Whale sticks out in Aronofsky’s filmography. Yes, the film is gross. Yes, the camera refuses to turn away, but in service of what? While Aronofsky has convinced viewers to watch the most disturbed film put to screen for the sake of deciphering a cinematic code, The Whale provides no such incentive because there is so little to explore. The current cinematic landscape is an ocean of white whales, and ironically, this film is one not worth hunting.