Film

Brendan Fraser as Charlie in The Whale.

By Eileen G ’Sell

been obsessed with the frailty — and defilement o the human body rom a heroin addicted amputee in Requiem for a Dream (2000) to an aging, steroidaddled hardbody in The Wrestler rom a bulimic ballerina in Black Sw an to a pregnant trophy wife in M other! the filmma er’s most memorable leads mo e through the world in bodies that betray them or are betrayed by them in e ual measure is latest psychological drama The Whale is no di erent though the type o body portrayed onscreen and how that body is isually rendered has prompted no small amount o contro ersy Is the graphic depiction o a pound man dying o heart ailure automatically grotes ue Is the at suit donned by lead actor rendan raser itsel a orm o at phobia r rather is the film humani ing indeed heroi ing — a character whose body we are all too groomed to shame hile all these uestions are worth pursuing as ar as the ethics o representation are concerned they ha e little bearing on the uality o this film which un ortunately cannot be categori ed as one o rono s y’s better mo ies Indeed it may ery well be his worst and I say this as one o the only critics out there who en oyed M other! dapted rom a play o the same name by Samuel D unter The Whale often eels trapped within its own stage li e domestic setting through which harlie the film’s reclusi e hero struggles to hea e himsel o his couch and mo e within his Idaho apartment he narrow cademy ratio lends urther claustrophobia to the rame deliberate perhaps as it orces our eyes to ocus on harlie but tendentious in insisting that his body as spectacle is enough to lend the mo ie dramatic he t o say this mo ie is hea y handed is an understatement rono s y and unter o ertly spell out the terms o harlie’s tragic decline and assign unambiguous moral irtues to irtually all the characters onscreen In an early scene we learn rom i ong hau who manages to ma e e en the most stilted dialogue plausible harlie’s good friend and, we later learn, the sister o lan his deceased male lo er that he has “only a wee to li e” i he re uses to go to the hospital rom there on out the film’s narrati e is di ided into “Day ” “Day ” etc ust in case we were not already concerned that harlie might be on his way out acing imminent mortality harlie has good reason to a oid de oting his final wee to his ob teaching the basics o a fi e paragraph essay to indi erent undergrads online and so spends the bul o the film trying to ma e peace with his estranged teenage daughter llie Sadie Sin and e wi e ary Samantha orton sadistic high schooler as de oted to moc ing her at Dad as she is in collecting his li e sa ings llie is not your typical annel sporting smartphone scrolling en delin uent She manages to e hibit e actly ero redeeming alues despite harlie’s incessant awning about her being “an ama ing person ” “I’m worried she’s orgotten what an ama ing person she is ” he tells ary and somehow we’re supposed to belie e this

Similarly we are supposed to belie e that the body harlie stu s with ood is an actual obese body ut it is clearly not In a way the e cess o the at suit isually distracts rom the realities o li ing in such a body t times I ound mysel stric en with sympathy or harlie attempting to complete basic e eryday tas s then would find mysel thin ing “ ut that doesn’t loo real ” Did he ha e to be pounds raser is already a large actor and would arguably be e en more ulnerable onscreen as a ery o erweight man rather than a morbidly obese one

In case any were in doubt o the film’s gra itas M oby Dick is repeatedly re erenced to remind us eading rom what is supposedly llie’s hand written middle school essay on erman el ille’s classic who reads the unabridged ersion in se enth grade harlie finds meaning in his own sadness apparently redeemed by the possibility that his daughter was able at some point to discern sadness too hat is most sad about this mo ie howe er is that none o the people onscreen no matter their si e bear the comple ity o any one o el ille’s minor characters nd it’s too bad mo ing drama about a sympathetic at person is something I’d lo e to see but rono s y was not the director to ma e that mo ie

Rated: R Run-time: 117 minutes