TIFF 2022 | Movie Review: "The Whale" Sees Fraser Seeking Solace
10/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars
In Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke plays an aging and battered pro athlete staring down the last stages of his career and his last chances at redemption with his only daughter, with whom he has become estranged. His latest and eighth film, the fervently anticipated The Whale, sees the now 53-year-old director returning to a similar story, swapping out Rourke for Brendan Fraser (in, yes, a career-defining performance), Wood for Sadie Sink (sensational), but keeping the themes of obsession, grief, and a reckoning with the self. Subjects who push their bodies to extremes also inhabit both films, but whereas as Rourke’s steroid-injected Randy tries to find his solace in the extremes, in challenging his body, Fraser’s Charlie, a 600-pound man, looks for his salvation in art, honesty, and the written word—that which can transport him outside of his body.
When we first “meet” Fraser’s Charlie, he is a voice and a black almost-square in a Zoom-style virtual English lesson—an almost-square framed precisely by the 1.33 aspect ratio of Aronofsky regular Matthew Libatique’s cinematography. In this way, we first meet Charlie by staring into a blank void, just as Charlie himself will spend much of the film’s runtime staring down the dark unknown of his own expiry. Charlie’s obesity has progressed to the point of congestive heart failure, and though he has his dear friend and nurse, Liz (Hong Chau, The Menu), regularly tending to him, he still struggles with an eating disorder, severely limited mobility, and a crushing feeling of loss following the death of his partner. But throughout the week that The Whale covers, Charlie’s small and dimly lit apartment will also play host to a bushy-tailed young missionary (Ty Simpkins), Charlie’s brooding, estranged daughter, Ellie, and his ex-wife (Samantha Morton).
The Whale is Aronofsky’s submission to the chamber drama film style, its action taking place entirely inside Charlie’s abode. And while this single location is competently blocked, maneuvered, and photographed, one can’t help but think Aronofsky to be playing it safe in how straightforward he keeps the presentation. Unlike in past Aronofsky works, nothing in The Whale is abstracted, dream-mutated or made fantastic; rather, Charlie’s confinement is a bland Midwest tomb and nothing more. The only “peculiar” component of the story is the singular bird that Charlie’s leaves feed for outside of his window (and even this could be construed as something as obvious as “a want for escape”). The Whale is stripped back in this sense. Meanwhile, the film’s mise-en-scène pares back compositional clutter and drenches the backgrounds in heavy shadows, thereby placing emphasis more emphatically on dialogue and performances. Aronofsky no-doubt hopes to honour the theatre-roots of his project’s story, The Whale having been adapted from playwright Samuel D. Hunter’s theatre piece of the same name.
Thankfully, the performances encompassed in Aronofsky’s film are deeply felt, vulnerable, and searing; the emotions they lay to waste numerous; the awe they command unquestionable. Fraser and Sink react off of each other like two objects caught in the upstream of a whirlwind, Sink making clear what impressed Aronofsky, and Fraser giving it what could accurately be described as his all, worlds of pain and sorrow opening up in his eyes, which can look concurrently bulging and sunken in his distended form. Of course, it must also be mentioned that what is brought out is owed in fair part to the prosthetic artistry of Canadian Adrien Morot, an artist whose meticulous work should be “hung in the Tate Gallery,” as Fraser opined in a post-screening Q&A.
When queried about his intentions with The Whale and its echoes of The Wrestler, Aronofsky answered back at that same Q&A that what has drawn him to his projects most has been their ability to transport him into the body of another, no matter that other’s genetics. It is clear that Aronofsky has repeatedly now found himself enveloped by the more challenged and stressed upon bodies, whether they be Randy in The Wrestler’s enhanced but battle-scarred body, or Charlie’s heaving, imploding body. Aronofsky throws himself into these bodies because he too maybe wants to find solace, and while it could be said that Aronofsky would seem to throw himself more passionately and more creatively into his previous efforts like The Wrestler, Aronofsky’s collaboration with Fraser feels like one of the most inspired and entwined in years. The two are back on the world stage, and with The Whale it is proven that they both have the potential to capitalize on and do more boundary pushing work with their impressive abilities. It has also been proven that they both have the bravery to plunge themselves further into brave new bodies, plunge further and then engrossingly, profoundly transcend.
