Darren Aronovsky's uncompromising take on grief, fatherhood, Literature and, well, the horrifying reality of morbid obesity divided critics. Some disliked it, some admired Brendan Fraser's Oscar-winning performance. A critic I quite admire called it "stagey". Well, yes. It is a film adaptation of a stage play, after all.
I greatly admired this courageous work. Why? It starts with the very artistic choice of a 4:5 aspect ratio (a la Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse) which underscores the dilemma of one who has fallen prey to addictive over-eating: the world literally becomes too relatively small to contain the very large person and they are constantly bumping into things and can't function in any way normally.
And it ends with denouement that can only be called Revelatory. I won't spoil it to say that the very Aronvsky-esque ending (have you seen his masterpiece, The Fountain?) has Fraser's character perhaps ascending to Heaven. I would argue that moment is very well earned.
In between we have Fraser's desperately humanistic portrait of a man, destroyed by Divorce and grief, who has been taken over by what is acknowledged as an addiction, overeating. We open with him masturbating while watching porn, when a knock at the door of his sad little apartment interrupts the sad, loveless act. The film's tone is set perfectly, as we are brought into the world of Fraser's character, perhaps living out his last days, with absolutely no Frills. Straight, No Chaser.
Whether this is Realism, or Naturalism I am not sure, as I did not attend Film School. What it is, is a visceral gut punch of uncomfortable Reality. It would be arrogant to assume that critics and viewers who did not care for The Whale were unable to "handle the truth" of its squirm-inducing scenes, which include Fraser walking back a heart attack by reciting lines from an Essay about the novel Moby Dick, or his estranged daughter (played brilliantly by Sadie Sink) emotionally flaying him for abandoning her.
I could go on, but, as Samuel Beckett might say, "I can't go on, I must go on, I will go on". OK, one final set of kudos for The Whale. The plotting and story (perhaps inherited from the stage play?) are nearly perfect. There are two major revelations in the film that relate directly to one and other, well, three, if you count discovering that Fraser's character's Nurse is related to the event that caused is extreme grief. How these Revelations are gradually, beautifully teased out through the dialogue and action is truly masterful.
The main Revelation of The Whale is, perhaps, that "we are all children of a Creator, worthy of the dignity of anyone on the plant" (cribbed from a Catholic Priest I admire). To me, that is worth the price of admission.
