Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is a recluse; an overweight English teacher with mounting health concerns whose partner died a few years ago.  After a close call with death and a chance rescue by Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a young missionary, Charlie fears for what little time he has left on Earth and seeks to reconnect with his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) and ex-wife, Mary (Samantha Morton).  Doing so, however, brings up many unreconciled emotions – anger, guilt, and a little love, too – that the fractured family may not have time to process properly as Charlie’s health continues to rapidly decline. 

Director Darren Aronofsky continues his streak of inspired casting choices with The Whale, his screen adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s play of the same name.  The single-location film, an attractive quality on this side of the Covid-19 pandemic, was released by A24 after a premiere at the Venice Film Festival which greatly praised the film.  Fraser has also been receiving accolades from many of the major guilds and critical circles for a tour-de-force performance in a film that has much of the same baggage as many of Aronofsky’s previous works.  Playing by his same rules, in addition to the slight impenetrable quality many stage-to-screen adaptations struggle with, The Whale is unlikely to win the director any new fans, but it is a solid work that offers a lot to mull over at the conclusion. 

Fraser has been rightfully lauded for his role as Charlie, the first major role for the 1990s blockbuster heartthrob-hero in some time.  At the center of the film, Charlie is required to build immediate empathy with the audience, not just because this is his story, but because there are few other characters to latch on to and they all prove themselves to be incredibly complicated and difficult people; Charlie included.  Aronofsky opens his film at a very low, private, and humbling moment for Charlie as he goes into cardiac arrest after masturbating to online porn, and that is where Thomas finds him before calling for his nurse, Liz (Hong Chau), on a cellphone Charlie dropped and was unable to reach.  Aronofsky is very blunt with his audience in opening this way, and Fraser handles the scene, and the whole role, with grace and humility allowing the camera to capture everything he has to give. As many plays often do, The Whale will find Charlie laying bare some of his deepest emotions before the story closes.   

Being based on a stage production, it is a very wordy film. While that is not a bad thing, there are moments where Aronofsky does not seem to trust his audience enough with the visual language and the metaphors as Matthew Libatique’s camera will pan, zoom, and hold in time with the speeches so that the subtext quickly becomes text.  It is a hurdle for the whole cast, none more than Charlie given his higher concentration of screen time, and it, unfortunately, hurts the overall power and impact of the film.  On stage, audiences are always in a wide view and the various visual motifs begin to reveal themselves slowly over time, but with the magic of cinema Aronofsky shows his cards a little too quickly and it is difficult for the various mysteries to really build up their strength and intrigue.  Without all of those overarching wonders, the burden falls entirely onto the shoulders of the cast making the film a bit too melodramatic at times as the different connections between them all come to light. These meant-to-be-big moments do not always feel as revelatory a discovery as the script clearly intends. 

Ellie is the one most hurt by the transition from stage to screen, and it is an ill effect that Sink is unable to fully shake off from her performance.  Her role quickly becomes entrenched in rebellious teenage angst, and while there are inklings of nuance peppered throughout the script, her performance remains rather one note. Though much of the alienation can be traced back to her mother, Mary, who fought for full custody of Ellie, the role does not allow Sink to really explore the toll that not having her father present for much of her life and then coming back to him in these formative years would have on her. There are the practical gains such as the promise of a large inheritance or assistance with her English essays for school so that she can graduate, and Sink is able to latch her performance onto those motivations, but the script is much more interested in the emotion so her performance feels a little out of place in the wider context of the picture. 

Simpkins and Chao, however, are pitch-perfect in The Whale as they wage their own battles over Charlie. Thomas is very interested in saving Charlie’s soul, feeling he was led to him by God in Charlie’s time of need, whereas Liz wants to save Charlie’s life because of their own friendship, both personally and professionally as her patient. Theology v. Science; it is an age-old debate and one that has fascinated Aronofsky and informed many of his previous works with The Whale being one of his most personal battles with these two ideologies since The Fountain (2006). Thomas and Liz go head-to-head quite often in the film, but it is Thomas’ final scene that is one of the strongest in the film – only behind Charlie crying out that he hopes to have achieved just one thing in his life by providing for Ellie – and Simpkin’s fading façade is fascinating to behold. At once, it is God turning on his creation for having sinned, but on the other side of that argument, it is the creation lashing out at God for the nature of their being as well as the anger and rage against the cruelty of the divine plan. 

This debate is the most interesting of the many arguments which The Whale frames, but unfortunately it is not the one that carries the film. Much has already been said, even before the wide release, about the decision to have Fraser portray Charlie through the use of a fat suit and prosthetics. Add to this, the filmmaking choices that force audiences into a gawking position be it the camera angles to highlight his size in the frame or the purposefully accented sound design when Charlie is eating that gives an animalistic quality to a necessary function. While Charlie’s lifestyle has toppled into an unhealthy pattern after – or while suffering from – a bout of depression, The Whale is challenging audiences to see past these choices and see Charlie as a human. Aronofsky is largely successful in this challenge, but where he fails Charlie is in the handling of his homosexuality. There is a large disconnect between how Aronofsky chooses to portray Charlie’s sexuality and how the character views that facet of himself. He is not ashamed or apologetic for his sexuality, and though he is empathetic towards Mary and Ellie who feel hurt after he left them for a life with Alan, he will not renounce or lessen his love for his deceased partner. This is not a call for only gay actors in gay roles, but it is a call for directors to be more careful in how they portray their queer characters and to not frame them with bias. Aronofsky is able to build empathy between the audience and Charlie in regards to his weight even though the filmmaking is challenging audiences to lash out at the man who is eating himself into an early grave, but that same humanity is not extended to Charlie’s sexuality. This is incredibly obvious in the final shot; the last image in Charlie’s mind: a memory on the beach as a husband to Mary and father to Ellie, the patriarch of a nuclear American family. The visual language coupled with the language from the script itself when the other characters talk about Charlie’s homosexuality paints feelings of disgust from the director. It is the culmination of small nuances throughout the script, those few off phrases here and there from Mary, Ellie, and Thomas that frame Alan as the fatal temptation that led to Charlie’s own downfall in life despite Charlie speaking of his dearly departer partner with nothing but love in his heart for the man taken from him too soon, that lead to this tonal divide. Had Charlie been suffering some of his own doubts about his sexuality, what we see and hear would have felt more singular and this internalized homophobia would be one more battle for Charlie to fight, but while Aronofsky’s handling of a queer character is questionable at best, it is still refreshing to see a character like Charlie so confident in his own being instead of wallowing in repression and guilt. 

The Whale is a complex piece to wrestle with, and as such opens itself up for repeat viewings. Fraser commands the screen with his varied performance as a man fighting frantically against his own destruction. It is a painful tragedy to bear witness to, amplified by the single location; an apartment that slowly closes in on us, tightening its grip and leaving audiences gasping for air. Polarizing, which is par for the course for Aronofsky, The Whale faces some minor shortcomings in its leap from stage to screen, but it is not so prickly that audiences will not be able to find something of value to hold on to in the story. The crux is that it just tries to tackle a little too much so that it will not always feel like a fully complete thought. Powerful when it counts, the second act stalls at times, and while much of that can be due to the camera showing us too early what could otherwise evolve over time on the stage, The Whale is never less than captivating thanks to Fraser’s incredible comeback performance in a role that undoubtedly has some very personal connections to the actor’s own career path.