The Whale

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’s sui­cide. Char­lie (Bren­dan Fras­er) is con­fined to his apart­ment, sub­sist­ing on take­out and gro­ceries deliv­ered to him by his friend Liz (Hong Chau) while teach­ing online Eng­lish class­es. He keeps his lap­top cam­era off, wor­ried his stu­dents will be dis­gust­ed by his appearance.

Real­is­ing his eat­ing dis­or­der is going to kill him, Char­lie attempts to recon­nect with his estranged daugh­ter Ellie (Sadie Sink) who is still furi­ous at him for leav­ing her and her moth­er Mary (Saman­tha Mor­ton) years ago. Mean­while, meek mis­sion­ary Thomas (Ty Simp­kins) comes across Char­lie and begins vis­it­ing dai­ly in an attempt to save his eter­nal soul.

But Char­lie is resigned to his fate. The past eight years have been a form of slow sui­cide. He pun­ish­es him­self with food. He eats until he vom­its and then eats some more. Fras­er – in his first major film role for almost a decade – imbues Char­lie with pal­pa­ble warmth and opti­mism from under­neath the lay­ers of make-up, pros­thet­ics and video effects. He cap­tures Charlie’s deep-root­ed sad­ness and his desire to love and be loved, that oth­ers have a hard time see­ing as they can’t get past his appear­ance. It’s a plea­sure to see Fras­er giv­en a role he can put his heart into, and his nuanced per­for­mance 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 (com­par­isons to Aronofksy’s The Wrestler are inevitable) and Sink is a per­fect foil to Fras­er, in a tricky role as an antag­o­nis­tic teen brat. She cap­tures the anger and sad­ness that comes from parental aban­don­ment, as well as an under­ly­ing clev­er­ness that is obscured by meanness.

Aronof­sky isn’t a par­tic­u­lar­ly empa­thet­ic film­mak­er (at times his work feels out­right cru­el) 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 evokes the ocean, whether in 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. Who doesn’t long for accep­tance and peace, par­tic­u­lar­ly after endur­ing great pain?

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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