NYT OPINION: The Cruel Spectacle of ‘The Whale’
By Roxane Gay
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: December 10, 2022 at 02:00AM
The film should ask us to see Charlie, the protagonist played by Brendan Fraser, as a person, to understand his grief and mourn with him, to hope for him to pull his life together. But that’s not how the movie was filmed. Most audiences will see the spectacle of a 600-pound man unwilling to care for himself, grieving the loss of his partner who died by suicide, eager to die himself, and using food as the means to that end. The disdain the filmmakers seem to have for their protagonist is constant, inescapable. It’s infuriating — to have all this on-screen talent and all these award-winning creators behind the camera, working to make an inhumane film about a very human being. What, exactly, is the point of that?
For most of its two-hour run time, “The Whale” is emotionally devastating. Charlie’s grief and inability to find the will to live is utterly crushing. The material circumstances of his life — teaching writing online, always hiding from his students by keeping his camera off, enduring the understandable fury of his teenage daughter who simply wants to know why he abandoned her, shirking the concern of his best friend, who has already lost one beloved brother and can hardly bear to lose her last connection to him — is overwhelming and relentless, manipulative and pitiable. I suppose that’s the point of this particular adaptation from Sam Hunter’s play of the same name.
“The Whale” is assiduous about conveying its gravitas and self-importance. There is the austere title card and the dark and claustrophobic setting of a dank apartment; the formidable cast emotes solemnly but energetically. I didn’t know much about the film, but I did know it was about a fat man seeking some kind of redemption and that it starred Mr. Fraser, one of my favorite actors. Even though he wore a fat suit for the role, a Hollywood practice I find abhorrent, I was willing to give the movie a chance because he has earned plenty of my good will.
Members of the small cast acquit themselves well enough with the material they’re given. Charlie is isolated and is reckoning with his mistakes as he dies of heart failure. This is not a subtle film. In his final days, he tries to reconcile with his estranged, irreverent daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink). He is cared for by his best friend and deceased partner’s sister Liz (Hong Chau), and the monotony of his life is interrupted by Thomas (Ty Simpkins) a misguided missionary who awkwardly inserts himself into Charlie’s last days.
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By Roxane Gay
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: December 10, 2022 at 02:00AM
Stories have an impact. They contribute to perception. And how this film deals with fatness is egregious: exploitative and, at times, cruel.
“The Whale,” Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, is one you hope, desperately, will be seen by an audience that has the necessary cultural literacy, the empathy, to watch the story and recognize that the on-screen portrayal of fatness bears little resemblance to the lived experiences of fat people. It is a gratuitous, self-aggrandizing fiction at best.The film should ask us to see Charlie, the protagonist played by Brendan Fraser, as a person, to understand his grief and mourn with him, to hope for him to pull his life together. But that’s not how the movie was filmed. Most audiences will see the spectacle of a 600-pound man unwilling to care for himself, grieving the loss of his partner who died by suicide, eager to die himself, and using food as the means to that end. The disdain the filmmakers seem to have for their protagonist is constant, inescapable. It’s infuriating — to have all this on-screen talent and all these award-winning creators behind the camera, working to make an inhumane film about a very human being. What, exactly, is the point of that?
For most of its two-hour run time, “The Whale” is emotionally devastating. Charlie’s grief and inability to find the will to live is utterly crushing. The material circumstances of his life — teaching writing online, always hiding from his students by keeping his camera off, enduring the understandable fury of his teenage daughter who simply wants to know why he abandoned her, shirking the concern of his best friend, who has already lost one beloved brother and can hardly bear to lose her last connection to him — is overwhelming and relentless, manipulative and pitiable. I suppose that’s the point of this particular adaptation from Sam Hunter’s play of the same name.
“The Whale” is assiduous about conveying its gravitas and self-importance. There is the austere title card and the dark and claustrophobic setting of a dank apartment; the formidable cast emotes solemnly but energetically. I didn’t know much about the film, but I did know it was about a fat man seeking some kind of redemption and that it starred Mr. Fraser, one of my favorite actors. Even though he wore a fat suit for the role, a Hollywood practice I find abhorrent, I was willing to give the movie a chance because he has earned plenty of my good will.
Members of the small cast acquit themselves well enough with the material they’re given. Charlie is isolated and is reckoning with his mistakes as he dies of heart failure. This is not a subtle film. In his final days, he tries to reconcile with his estranged, irreverent daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink). He is cared for by his best friend and deceased partner’s sister Liz (Hong Chau), and the monotony of his life is interrupted by Thomas (Ty Simpkins) a misguided missionary who awkwardly inserts himself into Charlie’s last days.
Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/opinion/the-whale-film.html
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