"And I felt saddest of all when I read the boring chapters that were only descriptions of whales, because I knew that the author was just trying to save us from his own sad story, just for a little while."
Charlie reads this passage again and again when his life-threateningly high blood pressure begins to spike. It's from an essay about Moby Dick, but the object of Captain Ahab's obsession isn't the actual source of The Whale's title. Rather, it's a not-so-sensitive way to describe Charlie (Brendan Fraser), an online collegiate English teacher who can barely traverse his own apartment in small-town Moscow, Idaho, because of his 600-plus-pound frame. Unfortunately, Charlie can't save us from his own sad story.
The Whale is an exceedingly intimate character study written by playwright and Moscow native Samuel D. Hunter (an adaptation of his Drama Desk-winning play of the same name) and directed by Academy Award-nominated director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler). The story picks up as Charlie is teaching one of his classes, notably with his Zoom-like box blacked out so his students can't take in his appearance. Despite being a fierce proponent of the kids expressing honesty in their writing, he can't bear to let them see his physical form — one self-created out of tragedy and self-loathing.
After the class, Charlie is watching gay pornography on his laptop and begins to suffer a cardiac event. It just so happens this is the moment when Thomas (Ty Simpkins) shows up on his doorstep to spread the missionary good word of his New Life church. Thomas intervenes and helps lower Charlie's blood pressure by reading him the aforementioned essay, before Charlie's seemingly only friend, nurse and caretaker Liz (Hong Chau), shows up and shoos Thomas away. Liz tells Charlie he's suffering cardiac failure and will die in a matter of days if he doesn't go to the hospital, but he refuses, citing the cost of medical treatment. In the following days, Charlie reaches out to his estranged teen daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), in an attempt to reconnect despite her showing utter contempt for her father, who left her and her mother to have a relationship with one of his male students when Ellie was a child.
Cinematically, The Whale is intentionally constrained. While Aronofsky often tends to employ surrealistic elements in his films about psychological anguish, The Whale is starkly minimalist and grounded. Apart from the opening shot and a brief, hazy flashback to one of Charlie's fond memories, the story never ventures farther than the front porch of his apartment. (One can only discern it's set in Moscow via little details like the pizza delivery place, the 2016 GOP primary results flickering on Charlie's TV, and New Life being a not-so-hidden stand-in for Christ Church.) A tight 4:3 aspect ratio further makes the viewer feel like they are constrained in the small apartment just like Charlie is. Unlike many adaptations of plays for the big screen, The Whale doesn't inherently feel like a bottle story crafted to minimize set changes, as it makes narrative sense to never leave this space during what might be Charlie's final days.
When we're literally stuck in one place with these characters, acting becomes paramount, and The Whale delivers on that front. Charlie is a deeply complex character in all his flaws and beauty, and Fraser doesn't shy away from any of it, delivering a gut-wrenching performance. An optimist, Charlie has a pure love for the world that shines through in his interactions with Ellie and even the pizza guy who drops pies on his porch, but he just can't see himself as part of that goodness. It's absolutely brutal to watch the small shifts in Fraser's face when he's googling his own health conditions — deciding between positive action or intentionally worsening the problem. The film generated prerelease controversy for the fat suit Fraser wears to embody the role, but the film itself isn't an exercise in fat-shaming, though it's easy to see how people can be turned off by symbolic moments of suicidal tendencies expressed through binge eating.
The rest of the small cast also delivers. Sink plays Ellie with the angst of a kid who wants to watch the world burn down around her. She's full of hateful self-centered rudeness but also clearly was broken by her father's abandonment. Chau's Liz is vital to convey that someone cares about Charlie — even if he doesn't — providing both real warmth and exasperated rage when warranted. And Simpkins' hopelessly naive missionary manages to walk the line between goody-two-shoes and religious fanatic in a way that manages to convey both cluelessness and chilling determination.
The Whale is ultimately a harrowing look at convictions of belief and the ways in which love can be a devastating force. Even when love is beautiful and pure and joyous, it can be taken away by the choices people make. Choosing to love someone can leave a void of love in others, and sometimes that void can ultimately eat you alive from the inside. ♦
The Whale