The Whale – first-look review

After caus­ing chaos on the Lido in 2015 with Moth­er!, Dar­ren Aronof­sky returns to Venice with a film no less like­ly to divide audi­ences – based on Samuel D. Hunter’s play of the same name, The Whale depicts the final week in the life of a mor­bid­ly obese man who has devel­oped an eat­ing dis­or­der in the years fol­low­ing his boyfriend Alan’s death by sui­cide, specif­i­cal­ly star­va­tion. Char­lie (Bren­dan Fras­er) spends his days con­fined to his Ida­ho apart­ment, sub­sist­ing on take­out and gro­ceries deliv­ered to him by Alan’s sis­ter Liz (Hong Chau) while teach­ing online Eng­lish class­es to col­lege stu­dents, where he keeps his lap­top cam­era off at all times, wor­ried that his stu­dents will be dis­gust­ed by his appearance.

Real­is­ing his eat­ing dis­or­der is going to kill him soon, over the course of a sin­gle week Char­lie attempts to recon­nect with his estranged teenage daugh­ter Ellie (Sadie Sink) who is still furi­ous at him for leav­ing her and her moth­er Mary (Saman­tha Mor­ton) eight years ago to be with Alan’s. Mean­while, meek mis­sion­ary Thomas (Ty Simp­kins) comes across Char­lie in a state of dis­tress while going door-to-door preach­ing about the New Life cult, and begins vis­it­ing dai­ly in an attempt to save Charlie’s eter­nal soul.

But Char­lie is resigned to his fate. The past eight years have been a form of slow sui­cide for him, spurred by guilt for what he put his fam­i­ly through when he left them, and for being unable to save his boyfriend. He pun­ish­es him­self with food – he eats until he vom­its and then eats some more. In this man­ner it’s no dif­fer­ent than drugs or alco­hol, more con­ven­tion­al meth­ods of self-annihilation.

The dif­fer­ence is that fat­ness is par­tic­u­lar­ly repug­nant by soci­etal stan­dards, and Char­lie, weigh­ing 600lbs and unable to walk unaid­ed, would be lit­tle more than a car­ni­val freak­show to more peo­ple than would like to admit it. The words ​‘pathet­ic’ and ​‘dis­gust­ing’ are thrown around, but we nev­er gain a sense as to why Charlie’s rela­tion­ship with food is so tox­ic, which fur­ther stig­ma­tis­es his eat­ing dis­or­der and fat­ness more generally.

As some­one who is fat, has been fat all her life, has a dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with food and weight, and fre­quent­ly has to endure hate­ful treat­ment from com­plete strangers as a direct result of my being fat, my under­stand­ing and reac­tion to The Whale is informed by that lived expe­ri­ence. I know what it’s like to be treat­ed as less than human, and deeply wish The Whale would have done more to dig into the preva­lent notion (sub­con­scious or not) that fat peo­ple are any less deserv­ing of dig­ni­ty, respect, and love.

Of course Char­lie is an extreme case, one who has cho­sen to eat him­self to death out of deep depres­sion, but I wor­ry that pre­sent­ing fat­ness as some sort of moral fail­ing will only do more to make life dif­fi­cult for those of us who will nev­er be thin, no mat­ter how many diets we try, how many meals we skip, or how many hours we spend at the gym. Weight is a high­ly per­son­al mat­ter and there is some­thing grotesque in the idea some­one with a binge eat­ing dis­or­der should be treat­ed with any less care or empa­thy than some­one with a restric­tive eat­ing dis­or­der such as anorexia.

Nev­er­the­less, Fras­er – in his first major role for almost a decade – imbues Char­lie with warmth and opti­mism despite the lay­ers of make-up, pros­thet­ics, and video effects. He cap­tures Charlie’s deep guilt and sad­ness around how he has lived his life, and an aching desire to love and be loved that oth­ers have a hard time see­ing as they can’t get past his appearence. It’s a plea­sure to see Fras­er giv­en a role he can put his heart and soul into, and as some­one who has been vocal about his own trau­ma and expe­ri­ence with weight gain, he feels sym­pa­thet­ic to Charlie’s sit­u­a­tion, which saves The Whale from turn­ing into a ghoul­ish spec­ta­cle or a very art­ful­ly shot episode of TLC’s exploita­tive real­i­ty show ​‘My 600lb Life’.

It’s a sto­ry about a flawed father try­ing to do right by his daugh­ter before it’s too late – yes, yes, com­par­isons to The Wrestler are inevitable – and Sadie Sink is a per­fect foil to Fras­er, in a tricky role giv­en that 18-year-old Ellie is an antag­o­nis­tic brat (“She’s evil!” her exas­per­at­ed moth­er tells Char­lie). She cap­tures the anger and sad­ness that comes from parental aban­don­ment, as well as an under­ly­ing clev­er­ness that is obscured by mean­ness. It’s a strong ensem­ble – Chau and Mor­ton are utilised effec­tive­ly too, show­ing two dif­fer­ent sides of the despair those clos­est to Char­lie have devel­oped giv­en his situation.

Aronof­sky isn’t a par­tic­u­lar­ly empa­thet­ic film­mak­er (at times his work feels cru­el, such as Requiem for a Dream) and there’s an aus­ter­i­ty to the stag­ing of The Whale, in the dark­ness of Charlie’s apart­ment and the harsh strings of Rob Simonsen’s score, but these pair well with the soft­ness and occa­sion­al wry humour of Fraser’s per­for­mance, to cre­ate a film that – while not with­out flaws – reflects ten­der­ly on shame, guilt, and the human impulse to care and be cared for.

Recur­ring imagery through­out The Whale evokes the ocean, be it a pas­sage of an essay about Moby Dick, brief flash­backs to a trip the fam­i­ly took to the beach when Ellie was younger, or the rain which pours out­side Charlie’s apart­ment. The water sug­gests an immi­nent cleans­ing, and fits into Aronofsky’s well-estab­lished inter­est in bib­li­cal allu­sion (it’s hard to not think of the sto­ry of Jon­ah and the Whale too, with its themes of rebirth and redemp­tion). Who doesn’t long for accep­tance and peace, par­tic­u­lar­ly after endur­ing great pain?