Brendan Fraser is transformed into a character many times his actual size in the movie The Whale. That is the hook of the movie and its headline. The resources have been used to allow an actor of Fraser's average stature to play the role of a larger man. Is fat suits inherently dehumanizing or have they been put to use in the past? The full-body transformation of The Whale is no less real than any other part of the story. It's dramatic heft isn't real.
Fraser is playing a college professor who teaches from his home in Idaho. Charlie tells his students that hisWebcam is malfunctioning. He doesn't want them to see him because he's a big man. A new blood pressure reading puts Charlie in a danger zone because he hasn't tried to lose weight in years. His excessive eating is killing him quickly. He won't be going to the hospital.
The Whale gives explanations for what Charlie has been doing to his body. He says that he was always bigger, but not always this large. It is a symptom of grief that has turned into a spiral of shame. There is an anguished grapple with sexuality, a lover lost to suicide, an abandoned family, and an evangelical organization in the film. A rereading of a personal scripture is the only pleasure Charlie seems to derive from life. The obsession with unvarnished honesty is ironic.
Baskets creator Samuel D. Hunter made little attempt to disguise the theatrical origins of The Whale, which unfolds over what we are told might be the last few days of Charlie's life. The supporting cast of characters keep entering right and leaving left at regular intervals, nudging Charlie toward acceptance or possible redemption.
Liz, Charlie's friend and the nurse who checks up on him regularly, is among the group of people who come and go. Hong is so vulnerable and authentic in the role that it's a shame she's playing a character who can't stop spilling her guts. Thomas is a young missionary who wanders into the narrative and is determined to save Charlie's soul before it leaves. He has demons of his own as well. The main character abandoned his daughter to start a new life years earlier. It is kind of impressive how callous The Whale is towards her. She is a cartoon of venomous teen angst, throwing slurs and cyberbullies at anyone in her vicinity.
The Wrestler was a portrait of a damaged man pushing his body to life threatening extremes. One could say that this hots-hot auteur has a regular theme of corporeal abuse in his work. The director is fascinated with grotesquerie again. The movie The Whale is not an act of fat-shaming as some have claimed, it is an act of compassion. Aronofsky's compassion becomes a kind of nightmare pity when he looks upon Charlie as he masturbates on his couch in a state of co-mingled agony and pleasure.
Fraser doesn't seem to be asking for pity. The one-time A-list hunk of George of the Jungle and The Mummy wrestles with the limitations of the overheated material when he grabs his meatiest role ever. The star doesn't want to play Charlie as a sad story. He has a light sensitivity that meshes well with the heavy material. Fraser doesn't let the artificial girths do the acting for him when he buries him in latex. He gives us a glimpse of the charisma that made him famous. A soul still flickering beneath the pain that spurred it is what the impression is of.
Fraser can't overcome the contrivances, community theater histrionics, and artificial dialogue of Hunter's play. Aronofsky can't be that ambitious and inconsistent. No matter how much he commits to the black-box claustrophobia of the material or how much Rob Simonsen's operatic music swells and pleads, The Whale is still limp. The more essential flaws of the film are missed by getting hung up on Fraser's fake flesh. It is a gimcrack illusion of profundity.
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