{"id":9879,"date":"2023-04-13T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9879"},"modified":"2023-04-12T21:50:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T01:50:17","slug":"the-whale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/13\/the-whale\/","title":{"rendered":"The Whale."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I don\u2019t know what The Whale<\/em> was like on stage, but Darren Aronovsky\u2019s adaptation, which took two Oscars home last month, is excruciating on so many levels that even a strong performance from Brendan Fraser can\u2019t salvage it. When the main character\u2019s daughter screams at her father \u201cJust fucking die already!\u201d she could be speaking for all of us, because at that point there\u2019s still nearly 40 minutes of misery porn to go. It\u2019s manipulative, sermonizing claptrap, and I can\u2019t believe no one saw this film before its release and saw how bad and offensive it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fraser plays Charlie, a morbidly obese man who lives by teaching English and writing classes online while keeping his camera off. His eating disorder is his reaction to the trauma of the death of someone close to him, the details of which are revealed in bits over the course of the movie. The entire film takes place in or just outside of his apartment, where he\u2019s visited by a young missionary named Thomas; Charlie\u2019s nurse and friend Liz; Charlie\u2019s estranged daughter Ellie, whom he hasn\u2019t seen in nine years; and Charlie\u2019s ex-wife Mary. As you might expect from a movie adapted from a play, the dialogue between all of these characters exposes their back stories and gives Charlie some modest depth. We discover why that particular death has sent Charlie into what is essentially suicide by binge-eating, why he and Ellie haven\u2019t seen each other in so long, why his friendship with Liz is both profound and complicated, and some inspirational-poster advice about writing honestly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we don\u2019t get, unfortunately, is any real insight into Charlie, or what it means to be capital-f Fat. Charlie\u2019s obesity is handwaved away as the product of trauma, which is facile enough but could work in the service of a better story. Instead, the movie spends too much time pushing that angle while tying it to religion, homophobia, and a fairly na\u00efve interpretation of both grief and eating disorders. This isn\u2019t new, and it isn\u2019t interesting, and if you don\u2019t have either I\u2019m not sure why you make this movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlie is the only remotely interesting character in the movie, which is important since he\u2019s in almost every minute of it. (I think there are two conversations that do not involve him and take place in a different space.) Even so, there\u2019s little exploration of who he is other than that he\u2019s very sorry. The film isn\u2019t laughing at Charlie, or inviting us to do so; it\u2019s telling us to gawk at him, condescend to him, and maybe, if we\u2019re feeling charitable, pity him. He\u2019s pathetic, a mess, a slob, apologizing to everyone for merely existing. He\u2019s not a bad person because he\u2019s fat; he\u2019s not a bad person, but he\u2019s fat, and that is supposed to make us think less<\/em> of him. Rather than spend more of the dialogue showing us who he is under all that excess weight, it embarrasses us by embarrassing him: Liz saying \u201cbeep beep\u201d when he\u2019s backing up, when he chokes doing routine things like eating or nearly dies laughing or masturbating (a scene the movie really, really did not need), it\u2019s all just fat-shaming of a different sort. You can extrapolate from what we learn to see Charlie is probably an interesting person, an intellectual who loves words, whether in prose or poetry, and who has a lot more empathy for other people than they do for him. I wouldn\u2019t mind getting to know him. The Whale<\/em> won\u2019t let us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ending is a huge tearjerker, ruining one of the very few real emotional moments in the entire movie with an excess of gimmickry and artifice. It got me, even though I know better, because it\u2019s just so manipulative, especially given everything that came before. The Whale <\/em>hasn\u2019t earned the right to make the audience feel this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fraser is the only saving grace in the film, and while he wouldn\u2019t have been my pick (Colin Farrell<\/a> and Paul Mescal<\/a> were slightly ahead for me), he\u2019s worthy of the various Best Actor accolades he received. If he hadn\u2019t been good this might have been the worst movie of 2022. He manages to get somut e range of emotions into the character, and when he\u2019s hurt, ashamed, embarrassed, and so very often sorry, you feel it, probably the only honest emotions that come out of this film. Hong Chau was also nominated for an Oscar, as Best Supporting Actress, but she\u2019s very flat in this movie and often comes across as whiny; she was better in The Menu<\/a> <\/em>with a character who was only slightly more multi-dimensional. Sadie Sink gives the second-best performance as Ellie, but it\u2019s an extremely one-note character who might as well be from Flatland<\/em>. (Fun note: In a flashback scene, Sink\u2019s sister Jacey plays a younger Ellie.) Adrien Morot, Judy Chin, and Annemarie Bradley won the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and I think they were the most deserving of the nominees, although I can see the argument that this was all about a single character rather than an entire cast. The transformation of Fraser into a 600-pound man is completely believable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lindy West (of Shrill<\/em>) eviscerated this movie<\/a> and its ridiculous view of fat people better than I ever could. I\u2019ll just leave it that this movie was awful, and while I\u2019m very happy for Fraser and love the stories of actors who go from acting in bad mainstream movies to turning in Oscar- or Emmy-worthy performances (Michael Keaton being the best example), he\u2019s not reason enough to suffer through The Whale<\/em>. I\u2019m too much of a completist to skip it, but you should feel no compulsion to join me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know what The Whale was like on stage, but Darren Aronovsky\u2019s adaptation, which took two Oscars home last month, is excruciating on so many levels that even a strong performance from Brendan Fraser can\u2019t salvage it. When the main character\u2019s daughter screams at her father \u201cJust fucking die already!\u201d she could be speaking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1290,1339,1340,25,102,215],"class_list":["post-9879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2022-movies","tag-2023-best-actor-nominees","tag-2023-best-supporting-actress-nominees","tag-adaptations","tag-disappointments","tag-movies","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9880,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9879\/revisions\/9880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}