Bren­dan Fras­er is a man trans­formed in the first trail­er for The Whale

The gen­er­al premise of Dar­ren Aronof­sky​‘s new film The Whale has been known for a while, the news that Bren­dan Fras­er would por­tray a six-hun­dred-pound shut-in the ear­li­est thing any­one heard about the still-ges­tat­ing project. Some felt imme­di­ate mis­giv­ings about the sub­ject mate­r­i­al and its pair­ing with Aronof­sky; oth­ers began to have their doubts when the first still depict­ing the heav­i­ly pros­thet­ic-laden Fras­er appeared online. Per­haps that will change upon see­ing the trail­er, released just this morning.

The polar­iz­ing psy­chodra­ma expends a lot of effort upend­ing the assump­tions baked into its own set­up, a process that begins with the brief spot below. See­ing a trans­formed Fras­er (inside and out) in action con­veys some­thing impos­si­ble to per­ceive from a pho­to, the gen­tle search­ing in his wet eyes alone telegraph­ing an empa­thy cru­cial to the func­tion­ing of this risky, poten­tial­ly alien­at­ing char­ac­ter piece.

Fras­er por­trays Char­lie, a sui­ci­dal­ly depressed recluse intro­duced mas­tur­bat­ing him­self to the brink of a heart attack, his ven­tri­cles under as much strain as a soul car­ry­ing around years of grief and regret. As he mourns a past tragedy, he’s vis­it­ed by a nurse (Hong Chau) urg­ing him to take care of him­self, a mis­sion­ary (Ty Simp­kins) try­ing to get him into heav­en, and the long-estranged daugh­ter (Sadie Sink) releas­ing a life­time of built-up bile.

As expect­ed, the film has drawn strong reac­tions in the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive, though our own Han­nah Strong was left with an ambiva­lent sort of admi­ra­tion. In her review from the pre­mière at Venice, she wrote: ​“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.”

Aside from show­ing us the soft, vul­ner­a­ble face of the made-up Fras­er, the trail­er doesn’t give view­ers much to judge from, pre­fer­ring whis­pery voiceover and beatif­ic close-ups of the char­ac­ters to any­thing that actu­al­ly hap­pens in the film. For more timid view­ers, that could be the wis­est course of action; though Fraser’s been tipped as a fron­trun­ner in the Oscar race, there’s a lot of harsh, upset­ting mate­r­i­al liable to ran­kle the sen­si­bil­i­ties. That’s the Aronof­sky promise, after all.

The Whale comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 9 Decem­ber, and then to the UK on 3 Feb­ru­ary, 2023.