X
- 2022
- R
- A24
- 1 h 57 m
- 2022
- R
- A24
- 1 h 57 m
Summary A reclusive English teacher (Brendan Fraser) living with severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption.
Directed By: Darren Aronofsky
Written By: Samuel D. Hunter
- 2022
- R
- A24
- 1 h 57 m
- 2022
- R
- A24
- 1 h 57 m
The Whale
60
7.4
Where to Watch
Summary A reclusive English teacher (Brendan Fraser) living with severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption.
Directed By: Darren Aronofsky
Written By: Samuel D. Hunter
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 57 Critic Reviews
60
46% Positive
26 Reviews
26 Reviews
40% Mixed
23 Reviews
23 Reviews
14% Negative
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 57 Critic Reviews
60
46% Positive
26 Reviews
26 Reviews
40% Mixed
23 Reviews
23 Reviews
14% Negative
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
The cast’s commitment throughout The Whale allows Aronofsky to create a tearful experience.
The Whale is Aronofsky at his most trimmed down.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 223 User Ratings
7.4
73% Positive
163 Ratings
163 Ratings
20% Mixed
44 Ratings
44 Ratings
7% Negative
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 223 User Ratings
7.4
73% Positive
163 Ratings
163 Ratings
20% Mixed
44 Ratings
44 Ratings
7% Negative
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
IN A NUTSHELL:
This touching film is based on a theatrical play also called “The Whale.” It’s about a reclusive, morbidly obese English teacher who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter before his imminent death. It is brutally honest, raw, and heartbreaking.
After the movie debuted at the Venice Film Festival, he was given a six-minute standing ovation by the audience. He deserved every minute of it and more. It brought him to tears and has ignited new love and appreciation for him from Hollywood and fans around the world.
TIPS FOR PARENTS:
This movie is not appropriate for children.
The first scene shows a man pleasuring himself.
Profanity, crude language, and F-bombs
Talk of a **** relationship
THINGS I LIKED:
Brendan Fraser gives an Oscar-worthy performance. I could relate to him as an online professor. One of the classes I teach at a university is English, just like his character. While people have talked about his real-life weight gain, he wore a bodysuit to appear morbidly obese in this film. About the fat suit prosthetic, Fraser stated, “I developed muscles I did not know I had. I even felt a sense of vertigo at the end of the day when all the appliances were removed; it was like stepping off the dock onto a boat in Venice. That [sense of] undulating. It gave me appreciation for those whose bodies are similar. You need to be an incredibly strong person, mentally and physically, to inhabit that physical being.”
It’s heartbreaking and fascinating to watch Brendan Fraser’s character vacillate between giving up on himself and having hope for a better life.
The entire cast gave excellent performances and includes Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau, and Samantha Morton.
Sadie Sink’s little sister in real life plays young Ellie in the flashback scenes. Sweet.
The movie illustrates very well how we all fill our lives with something to reduce our pain, whether it be food, religion, relationships, sex, hatred, money, or something else.
The screenwriter, Samuel D. Hunter, grew up in Moscow, Idaho where the movie takes place. Brendan Fraser’s character keeps ordering pizza from “Gambino’s”, which is an actual pizza place there. The story is loosely based on Hunter’s real life as a **** man who taught writing at Rutgers University and who struggled with an eating disorder.
One-room movies are extremely difficult to film and keep an audience’s interest, but I was hooked the entire time (whale pun intended.)
Director Darren Aronofsky loves to use symbolic images and characters to get audiences to think, as he did in his dramatic film Mother! in 2017. It’s an effective storytelling technique that allows him to create layers of understanding. I love it. He also creates connections between mathematical numbers and religion in his movies. Have you noticed that too?
Samuel D. Hunter, the writer, does a fantastic job slowly revealing each character’s motivations.
THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:
It’s a rough movie to watch.
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Buried in a “fat suit,” his physical acting limited to the life of immobility Charlie has sentenced himself to, Fraser will break your heart playing the character’s pain and compassion.
Here, in short, is a self-regarding drama of self-loathing: hardly the most appetizing prospect. If it proves nonetheless to be stirringly watchable, we have Brendan Fraser to thank.
The Whale’s raison d’etre seems to be about being the engine driving Fraser’s long-awaited resurgence. Beyond that there’s nothing much to see.
In The 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. It proceeds from the assumption that a 600-pound man is inherently unlovable.
The director of shockers such as Requiem for a Dream and Mother! has had his mainstream moments, but he has never before been quite so at home to tawdry soap opera.
Simply an extraordinary film. Having seen Aronofsky’s previous works, I anticipated excess in camera work, jarring editing, and self-indulgence but was left stunned at his conscious restraint. There are certainly moments where his particular style shines through - namely in the face-forward, almost testimonial-like character shots - but overall, he’s willingly taken a backseat to his actors and their sole, bleak yet masterfully nuanced backdrop. Brendan Fraser’s portrayal of Charlie is masterful - so complex, so poignant, so powerful. The supporting cast - especially Hong Chau - similarly rise to the occasion. There has been much debate about what message Charlie’s story is supposed to send. Is it hope? Is it redemption? Is it love? Is it pain? Is it desperation? Is it rejection? Is it despondence? Is it a loss of faith in humanity? Is it a criticism of organized religion? The answer is “yes.” It’s all of these things. Aronofsky has chosen to leave the viewer responsible for reconciling the contradictions therein, and in doing so, has created a film worthy of infinite interpretations.
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Brendan Fraser deserves a 10, but the movie a 6. The story lacks that, story. Yes, the story is beautiful, but it doesn't go much further, we see the case of a devastated person after a loss and how he tries, through rebuilding his relationship with his daughter, to redeem himself from his mistakes and "heal". But it doesn't go beyond that.
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The performances here in The Whale are so fantastic that they deserve better material.
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(Mauro Lanari)
Blackmail and manipulative theater pièce, further weighed down by a quintal of prosthetics and even more spiritually sick than "The Fountain" [2006]. Another crap of the couple Aronofsky and A24.
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Production Company
A24,
Protozoa Pictures
Release Date Dec 9, 2022
Duration 1 h 57 m
Rating R
Genres
Awards
Academy Awards, USA
• 2 Wins & 3 Nominations
Golden Globes, USA
• 1 Nomination
Indiana Film Journalists Association, US
• 7 Nominations
