The Whale review: Darren Aronofsky’s worst themes, shoved in a fat suit

Review of WhaleThis was published after the film’s premiere at 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. It has been updated and reposted for the film’s theatrical release.

A24’s Whale drops all of Darren Aronofsky’s worst tendencies into a fat suit. It’s an exercise in abjection in the mode of Aronofsky’s torturous Requiem for a Dream, but it’s focused on an even more vulnerable target than Requiem’s addicts. It’s also full of the pet biblical wankery of Mother!, NoahAnd FountainIt is focused on the Christ figure who has the masochistic ability to absorb all of humanity’s cruelty and then store it in his large frame.

This kind of miserabilism is not for everyone, but it’s a common occurrence. But these viewers are also warned that not only is this film difficult to endure and likely to be actively harmful to some audiences, it’s also a self-serving reinforcement of the status quo — which is one of the most boring things a movie can be.

For a movie that, in the most generous reading possible, encourages viewers to consider that maybe there’s a painful backstory behind bodies they consider “disgusting” (the movie’s word),WhaleIt seems that the protagonist Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is not interested in his point of view. Charlie is a middle-aged divorcé living in a small apartment somewhere in Idaho, where he teaches English composition classes online. Charlie never turns his camera on during lectures, because he’s fat — very fat, around 600 pounds. Charlie uses a wheelchair to get around, but he also has graber sticks and other adaptive equipment around the house.

Imagine an alien landing on Earth, and wondering if its biggest members are attractive to it or repellent. WhaleThis would communicate clearly the answer. Aronofsky raises the audio foley whenever Charlie eats, in order to emphasise the sound of the lips mashing together. He plays ominous music under these sequences, so we know Charlie’s doing something It is very, very poor indeed. Fraser’s neck and upper lip are perpetually beaded with sweat, and his T-shirt is dirty and covered in crumbs. Fraser takes off his shirt as he slowly walks to his bed. Prosthetic fat is dangling from his skin and he slumps towards the camera looking like a rough animal. In case viewers still don’t get that they’re supposed to find him disgusting, he recites an essay about Moby-Dick and how a whale is “a poor big animal” with no feelings.

And that’s just what Aronofsky communicates about him through the film’s directing. This is the story. Whale’s first half is a gauntlet of humiliation, beginning as an evangelical missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins) walks in on Charlie as he’s having a heart attack, gay porn still playing on his laptop from a pathetic attempt at masturbation. Charlie’s nurse and only friend, Liz (Hong Chau), is mostly kind to him, although she enables him with meatball subs and buckets of fried chicken. So is Thomas, although he’s less interested in Charlie as a person than as a soul to save. But Charlie’s 17-year-old daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) openly despises him, and says the most vicious things she can think of to punish Charlie for leaving her and her mom, Mary (Samantha Morton), when Ellie was 8.

Aronofsky and writer Samuel D. Hunter (adapting his own stage play) don’t reveal the condescending point of all of this until the second half of the movie: Charlie is a saint, a Christ figure, the fat man who so loved the world that he let people in his life treat him like complete dogshit in order to absolve them of their hatred, and him of his sins. Meanwhile, a subplot involving Thomas’ past life in Iowa makes the bizarre assertion that people are actually trying to help when they treat others unkindly, which can only be true if the target of that hostility doesn’t know what’s good for them. What is the right answer? Is it better to have a kind heart or do they need to turn the other side? Depends on whether they’re fat, it seems. Charlie never comments on other characters’ smoking and drinking, but they sure do comment on his weight.

The most disappointing thing about Whale It is amazing how close they are to some kind of insight. Aronofsky and Hunter just needed to show some empathy and curiosity about people Charlie’s size, rather than paternalistically guessing at their motivations. The main culprit here is a plot point where Charlie refuses to go to the hospital, even though his blood pressure is dangerously high and he’s showing symptoms of congestive heart failure. At first, he lies to Liz and says he doesn’t have the money to pay the massive medical bills he’d rack up as an uninsured patient. Charlie’s savings account has more than $100,000.

Photo taken by Niko Tavernise/A24

Whale understands this as a combination of selflessness — he’s hoping to give that money to Ellie after he dies — and suicidality. What gives away Aronofsky and Hunter’s projection about Charlie’s motivations is that extensive studies have shown why obese patients avoid medical treatment, and it has nothing to do with self-sacrificing messiah-complex bullshit. Doctors are just cruel to fat people — and disproportionately likely to dismiss, demean, and misdiagnose them.

Another frustrating aspect is Brendan Fraser’s role as the title character. Charlie plays a thoughtful, intelligent, and funny man. He refuses let his tragic life make him cynical. Ellie’s insults are countered by affirmations and support. He believes there is something good in everybody. (She’s hurting, you see.) Fraser’s eyes are kind, and his eyebrows are furrowed with sadness and worry.

But if there’s any rage behind those eyes, we don’t see it. If Charlie is just telling people what they want to hear in hopes of minimizing their abuse, that doesn’t translate. The film seems satisfied with his surface-level protestations that he’s fine and happy and just a naturally positive guy, which again betrays its lack of interest in Charlie’s inner emotional life — Fraser’s sensitive attempt to find a man inside the symbol notwithstanding.

Aronofsky, his staff and their cleverness are what they care about most. Some of the barbs thrown around in Charlie’s apartment are actually pretty funny. (The movie openly shows its theatrical roots: The entire story takes place within the confines of Charlie’s apartment and front porch.) Chau is particularly good as Liz. Her role is one of a kind and caring friend who uses playful insults as her love language, but is actually there to defend the friendship. Of course, Liz’s hurting is not the only one. Everyone is. Charlie, however, is suffering the most from it.

You can see Whale as a fable, its moral is that it’s the responsibility of the abused to love and forgive their abusers. The movie thinks it’s saying, “You don’t understand; he’s fat because he’s suffering.” But it ends up saying, “You don’t understand; We have to be cruel to fat people, because we are suffering.” Aronofsky and Hunter’s biblical metaphor aside, fat people didn’t volunteer to serve as repositories for society’s rage and contempt. No one agrees to be bullied so the bully can feel better about themselves — that’s a self-serving lie bullies tell themselves. Externally-imposed martyrdom negates the purpose of this exercise.

Whale, Aronofsky posits his sadism as an intellectual experiment, challenging viewers to find the humanity buried under Charlie’s thick layers of fat. That’s not as benevolent of a premise as he seems to think it is. The assumption is that 600-pound men are inherently unlovable. It’s like walking up to a stranger on the street and saying, “You’re an abomination, but I love you anyway,” in keeping with the strong strain of self-satisfied Christianity that the film purports to critique. Audience members get to walk away proud of themselves that they shed a few tears for this disgusting whale, while gaining no new insight into what it’s actually like to be that whale. That’s not empathy. That’s pity, buried under a thick, smothering layer of contempt.

WhaleThis film is playing now in cinemas