The Whale
One of the things I’m most ashamed of in my life is something I did when I was a teenager. I cannot remember why I was upset with my mother, but I was, and I called her fat, and said something about it being embarrassing to me that she was. My mother has been overweight for most of my life, and while she’s tried to do exercises to help herself, at a certain point, she just did what she wanted to. My mother probably doesn’t even remember this moment, but I do, and I’ve felt guilty about it for a while.
The discourse surrounding Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale” has, honestly, been part of why this memory came back into mind. The film is about a morbidly-obese father who wants to reconnect with his daughter. This film displays moments of cruelty towards Charlie, Brendan Fraser’s character, from several different individuals. Some of it is warranted, but none of what’s warranted is because of his weight. We come to understand how that happened, and why he just cannot stop himself. Once we understand that, we have empathy for him. We might even come to remember moments in our own life when our sense of loss and isolation took over, and we found themselves unable to stop a self-destructive pattern.
It’s easy to judge people based on what our eyes see. It doesn’t matter if someone’s obese (or just doesn’t match our expectations of what they look like), homeless, a different race, part of a different religion, or a different sexual orientation. Part of the ways we grow as an individual is when we shed these judgments, and get to know someone before we start to formulate an opinion of them, rather than going with our snap judgment. This is the central theme of “The Whale,” and so much of the talk about how Aronofsky, Fraser, and the makeup team, chose to visualize the 600-pound Charlie is showing that a lot of critics are proving the film’s point for them. In a way, every character in “The Whale” formulates an opinion of one another based on what they see rather than who they are. That Charlie can still see something amazing in humanity after everything we’ve witnessed him go through is a credit to who he is; that he can get through to others with his words, and actions, is also to his credit.
Charlie is not a perfect human being, however. He manipulates situations and people to get what he wants; in a way, it feels as though he’s using his weight as an excuse to get people to do things for him, even though we see how self-sufficient he mostly is. And yet, I still feel for Charlie, because he’s reached the point where- I feel- everyone who strives for happiness gets to, which is a desire to see others being their authentic self, free from the judgments of others. That sense of authenticity is freeing, and Charlie knows that. Even though he still feels self-loathing about his own weight, he owns it. Even as his health rapidly deteriorates throughout the week the film is set in, he doesn’t want to go to the hospital. That may seem selfish, but as the film tells us, he has very personal reasons for it. Charlie is an online instructor, and when we first see him, he’s telling his students- without showing himself, claiming his webcam is broken- how to write the most studious essays. At one point, however, he snaps, and he just wants them to write something authentic. He’s done being someone he isn’t. It’s the point of no return for Charlie; he knows who he is, and doesn’t care what other people think he is. That’s a moment we all should be so lucky to get to.
The drama of “The Whale” takes place almost entirely within the walls of Charlie’s apartment. When we first see him, he is jerking off to porn, which causes him to have difficulty breathing. At that moment, a missionary (Thomas, played by Ty Simpkins) comes to his door. The door is unlocked, and so- thinking it’s his nurse, Liz (Hong Chau)- he tells Thomas to come in. Thomas is shocked by what he sees- in every way- but he still reads an essay Charlie gives him to read. It’s about Moby Dick, and in listening to it, Charlie is able to normalize his breathing. When Liz does get there, she begs Charlie to go to the hospital. He doesn’t want to; he’d rather be dead than in debt. When Thomas tries to engage him with his faith, Liz is very protective of Charlie; turns out Thomas is a member of the church that caused Charlie’s boyfriend, Alan, to commit suicide. For Thomas, his being at Charlie’s place, at that time, was divine intervention; over the next few days, he will return, trying to impart what he thinks he knows about faith to Charlie. That gets more complicated when Ellie (Sadie Sink), Charlie’s daughter, starts to come to the apartment. She hasn’t seen him since he left her and her mother (Samantha Morton) when Ellie was 8 to be with Alan. Now, he wants to help her.
This is the third time Aronofsky has worked from someone else’s screenplay; this time, Samuel D. Hunter is adapting his stage play. In all three films- “The Wrestler” and “Black Swan” being the other two- Aronofsky is telling the story of people whom are driving to live as their authentic selves, and to show that what they have to offer has value. They almost don’t care if it kills them; if it does, they will have died being themselves. Part of what makes Fraser’s performance as Charlie so good is that he cuts through the artifice of the makeup to show us the humanity of the man. This is very similar to what John Hurt did in David Lynch’s “The Elephant Man,” and yes, the film deals in fatphobic cliches when it comes to eating, but once we understand the character, we understand where that comes from for him. Charlie eats because he hasn’t been able to stop since Alan died. When we lose someone we love, it’s not unreasonable to lose ourselves in grief, and give into self-destructive behavior. Grief is a powerful motivator, and a profound one, one which we may never get over. Charlie hasn’t, and he hates what it’s turned him into. At a certain point, we hope we can break that cycle that grief started, and move forward. Charlie knows it’s too late for him, and he wants to put all his energies to helping his daughter be the person he knows she can be.
The importance of what actors do in a film like this is that they make us empathize with their characters, as they- and the film- reveal everything about themselves. All of the actors in this film do that. The supporting MVP is Hong Chau; over the course of the film, we discover that Liz is more than just Charlie’s nurse, and understand why she is so protective of him. Chau is great in every moment of this film, but it’s moments with Simpkins and Fraser where she absolutely devastates me. Simpkins is in an interesting role, because the more we see him, the more we realize he is not showing his authentic self. It’s almost like being faced with someone who is inspires him to show more of himself, which is what he wants to do anyway. He still has a bit of the missionary in him, but as we see him for the last time, he seems more content. In her brief moments, Morton is electric as a woman still bitter at Charlie’s betrayal, and whom feels like he blames her for how reckless their daughter has become. That brings us to Sink, and while I think there are moments where her work is uneven, I also think it’s a reflection of the fact that Ellie is trying to figure herself out still, and she’s trying to hide that from Charlie. There’s a moment where he asks her to write something for him that takes him by surprise, and there’s a moment of realization from Fraser that is so beautiful it’s one of the most memorable moments of his career, and it’s one that will get little fanfare. Ellie, on the surface, is someone who’s thriving on the chaos she creates for others, but Charlie can tell, there’s something authentic in her that she just needs to find the right way to express. The ending for the two is really over-the-top and overwrought, but it’s a wonderful representation of them meeting each other on their own terms. It ends “The Whale” at a moment of triumph that still captures the complicated nature of life, and how people can lose themselves until they have to dig deep to finding what makes them them again. Sometimes, that’s all we can do.
