The Whale Review: Brendan Fraser Moves, but the Stage Never Leaves the Apartment

Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale is a chamber piece about a 600-pound man who will not leave his apartment in Moscow, Idaho. Charlie, played by Brendan Fraser, teaches online English writing courses with his webcam off. He is ashamed of how he looks. The film runs 117 minutes and gives him one room, one chair, one door, and a handful of visitors who want something from him.

Trailer, via A24.

Charlie and the Webcam

The premise is blunt. Charlie is a super-morbidly obese recluse in early 2016. He has heart failure, and his nurse Liz — Hong Chau, in the film’s sharpest turn — keeps bringing him food he should not eat while telling him to get treatment he says he cannot afford. Every night he orders pizza from Dan, who leaves it on the porch and takes payment from the mailbox. The two never meet.

That detail does more work than most of the dialogue. Aronofsky stages shame as architecture: a body hidden behind a screen, a face hidden behind a door.

Thomas at the Door

Then Ty Simpkins shows up as Thomas, a missionary from the New Life Church who wants to save Charlie. Charlie wants something else. He wants his daughter.

He reveals that he has been saving money for years and offers Ellie his $120,000 bank account if she spends time with him.

Ellie — Sadie Sink — agrees, on the condition that he does her homework. He asks her to write in a notebook he gives her. It is a transaction dressed as a reunion, and the film knows it.

What Liz Has Been Carrying

The best scene belongs to Chau. After shooing Thomas off, Liz changes her mind and talks with him outside. She tells him she is the adopted daughter of New Life’s head pastor. Alan, the student Charlie left his wife Mary for, was her brother. Alan’s religious guilt drove him to suicide. Charlie turned to emotional eating to cope with the grief, and that is where the weight came from.

The film’s release schedule:

It grossed $57.6 million against a $3 million budget.

The Awards and the Argument

The Whale drew a polarized response at Venice. Critics praised the acting — Fraser, Chau and Sink especially — and criticized the film’s handling of obesity. The awards season did not care about the second part. Fraser won Best Actor at the 95th Academy Awards, and the film won Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Chau was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. At the 76th British Academy Film Awards it picked up nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Make Up & Hair, Best Supporting Actress for Chau, and Best Actor for Fraser, who was also nominated at the 80th Golden Globe Awards.

Where the Film Actually Lands

Here is the problem, and it is a judgment, not a plot point: Samuel D. Hunter adapted his own 2012 play, and in this reviewer’s view the movie stays a stage piece. Charlie’s apartment is a single set, and Aronofsky fills it with people arriving to confess, accuse and plead. The screenplay, to my eye, keeps reaching for redemption Charlie has not earned on screen.

Fraser is genuinely moving. The makeup is convincing. But a performance and a prosthetics team cannot carry a film that, in this view, mistakes suffering for depth. The film asks us to weep for Charlie without letting him be small or wrong. He gives Ellie $120,000. He gives her a notebook.

The Venice polarization was the right read. This is a film with one great performance, one great supporting turn, and a script that keeps reaching for a grace note it has not set up. The Oscars rewarded the craft. The craft is real. So is the hole at the center.

6.0/10.

A24 · Brendan Fraser · Darren Aronofsky · movie review · The Whale