The Whale Review - Brendan Fraser Swims Like A Whale In The Ocean Of Emotions

Darren Aronofsky takes handsome hunk Brendan Fraser to portray a 600-pound obese man in his psychological emotional drama, The Whale. Based on the 2012 play of the same name, The Whale is a family drama that is conquered by its premises, emotions, and characters. You don't have to just watch it, but feel it. We have been getting films about man/woman in trouble with some disease, obscenity, or something like that since the talkies began in the 1930s. First it was a woman or man with cancer, then it became a tumour, then an abnormal character, then a mute/deaf or blind person, and finally it became euthanasia. The Whale brings an overweight man's life to the screen, but unlike other emotional dramas, it does not try to emphasise his character. It keeps him like a normal man, who is stubborn and has so many faults in him, but still, you are carried away by him in the end.The Whale is about Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a reclusive Idaho-based English teacher who never leaves his apartment due to severe obesity. He has online teaching classes but keeps his webcam off to hide his morbidity. He is taken care of by his friend, Liz (Hong Chau), who is a nurse and his only friend at the moment. Liz tells him to visit a hospital for a severe risk of congestive heart failure, which Charlie refuses. Even when she tells him that he is soon going to die, Charlie refuses to go to the hospital. He is visited by Thomas (Ty Simpkins), who claims that he is a missionary and that reading the Bible might help Charlie in his last moments. Charlie then decides to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), by offering her the sum of $120, 000 from his bank account. Ellie starts visiting her father, but she is not a decent girl at all. Will Charlie manage to make her good, and will she accept her father, who left her at the age of 8?The Whale has a funny title for the kind of emotional and psychological narrative it has. You'll learn the reasons behind that in the film, though. The Whale proves how an essay could be used so well and so metaphorically. One more thing is that it doesn't try to be a film full of positivity and good people. We actually love such surroundings, but here they make us realise that not all problematic people have to be helpless and sympathetic. Charlie's homosexuality, Liz's abusive nature and words, Thomas' true colors, and Ellie's evil persona—these are the things that make you believe in the negativity that we have around us. You might hate the characters and the film for that (even I did), but to be honest, it's hard to always find good people around you. They must be cruel in order for us to feel reality. The screenplay is a little slow in the middle, and all those not-so-nice people make you lose interest for a while, but The Whale covers the loss in the climax.The handsome Brandan Fraser of The Mummy (1999) will always remain a part of my childhood memories, but his best performances came in Still Breathing and Crash, which aren't that popular. Now, he has won the most number of awards of any film in his career with The Whale, and I don't wonder why. It's not just about the prosthetics and physical challenges he might have faced or even the kind of dedication he showed, but it's about getting everything right in one of the most challenging portrayals ever. He is just superb in every scene, but then there is that conversation scene in the climax that takes it to another level. Keep the Best Actor trophies coming. Hong Chau is equally good in the best supporting role in this film. Sadie Sink is beautiful yet brutal and raw, Ty Simpkins is decent, and Samantha Marton shines brightly in that one single long scene.

The Whale has a heart-touching background score and fantastic cinematography. The dialogues are vulgar and scurrilous as per the situations. I hated some of them for being overly abusive, but what to do if the anger and nature of the characters demanded that they be so? Charlie is a complex character; actually, all of them are. Everyone has some issues with their lives; nobody is just plain happy. Moreover, things like homosexuality, religious guilt, and marijuana make it more unfriendly, but that's what defined The Whale to its core. However weird that ending looked, it's just about your perspective on looking at it. Darren Aronofsky navigates this emotional ocean without disturbing the other sleeping fish. We all have brains, so it's obvious and easy to find out the mistakes, and it's necessary too, but then, we all have hearts too, which is where this film wins. Wetting a couple of tissues at the end of the film is always an engrossing experience, and The Whale gives you that, along with the best performance of Brandan Fraser's career so far.