In early 2016, Charlie, a morbidly obese English teacher, teaches online English writing courses to college students, but keeps his webcam off, ashamed of his physical appearance. Charlie isolates himself, never leaving his apartment in Moscow, Idaho.[a] His nurse and only friend, Liz, enables him by bringing him unhealthy food, while contradictorily urging him to visit a hospital for a heart failure treatment, but Charlie insists he cannot afford medical care. Charlie is also visited by Thomas, a missionary for the New Life Church who wants to save him. He orders pizza almost every night through an established routine with delivery driver Dan, who leaves the pizza outside on his porch and collects cash payment from the mailbox with the two never interacting face-to-face.
Charlie hopes to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie, whom he abandoned eight years ago when leaving his wife, Mary, for his male lover Alan. He reveals that he has been saving money for years and offers Ellie the entire $120,000 in his bank account if she spends time with him without her mother's knowledge. Ellie agrees on the condition that he completes all her homework for her, though he also requests that she writes in a notebook he gives her. As Charlie's health worsens, Liz brings him a wheelchair so he can remain mobile.
Thomas visits a disgruntled Liz, who chastises him. She reveals she is the adopted daughter of New Life's head pastor and that Alan was her brother; Alan's religious guilt drove him to suicide, leading a grief-stricken Charlie to cope with this by emotional eating, which caused his morbid obesity. Despite Liz's objections, Thomas still believes his mission is to help Charlie. One day, Ellie places crushed Ambien into Charlie's food, knocking him out. Thomas arrives, and the two smoke marijuana, whereupon Thomas confesses to stealing his youth group's money and running away from home because he felt dissatisfied. Ellie secretly records their conversation.
Out of concern, Liz brings Mary to visit Charlie. When Liz learns about the amount Charlie has saved for Ellie, she storms out, furious over being lied to about why he avoided medical treatment. Mary and Charlie argue over his decision to leave his family for Alan. Mary also expresses contempt for Ellie’s sullen demeanor, though Charlie admits his hope that their daughter will prove he did "one thing right with his life." Later that night, after delivering the pizza, Dan sees Charlie for the first time and leaves horrified. As a result, Charlie has a severe binge-eating episode and sends a profanity-laden email to his students, telling them to disregard the classwork and just write back "something honest."
Thomas visits Charlie one last time to inform him that he is moving back home after Ellie sent his confession to his former youth group and family, who have forgiven him and implored him to return. He attempts to preach Romans 8:13 to Charlie, but Charlie chastises him when he attributes Alan's death to his sexual orientation. During his next class, Charlie tells his students he is being fired after the email he sent, and reads some of their submissions. To reciprocate their honesty, he switches on his webcam for the first time, and the students have mixed reactions. Charlie calmly proclaims that academics do not matter, but the honest things that his students wrote do, before abruptly ending the class by tossing his laptop against the fridge, destroying it.
Liz returns and comforts Charlie as his health rapidly declines. Ellie arrives to furiously confront him over an essay he rewrote for her; in which Charlie had instead replaced it with an essay about Moby-Dick she wrote in eighth grade, as he considers it the most honest essay he has ever read. Ellie initially rebukes him as he attempts to reconcile one final time, but she decides to read the paper aloud at Charlie's insistence. Charlie stands up and begins to walk toward her without assistance, which he had tried but failed to do during her first visit. As she finishes reading, they smile at each other and Charlie begins to levitate as he is engulfed in a bright white light.
Samantha Morton as Mary, Charlie's ex-wife and Ellie's estranged mother
Sathya Sridharan as Dan, a pizza delivery man from a restaurant Charlie frequently orders from
Production
Writing and casting
Darren Aronofsky has said that he tried to get the film, an adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter's 2012 play The Whale, made for over a decade, but could not do it because he struggled to find the right actor to portray Charlie. After seeing portions of Brendan Fraser's performance in a trailer for Journey to the End of the Night (2006), he decided that Fraser could be a good choice.[8]
The original play was set in 2009. However, the setting was updated to 2016 in the movie. This was because Hunter wanted to show the events as being before a major "seismic change", and doing so would make it clear that the play's events were prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.[9] Within the film, the television shows the unfolding of the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries.[10] In the original play, Thomas, an Evangelical Christian missionary, is instead a Mormon missionary.[9] The Liz character, in the original play and in the screenplay, did not have her ethnic background or race specified. The actress chosen to portray Liz, Hong Chau, is of Asian heritage. The final screenplay specifies that Liz was adopted as a way of accommodating Chau's casting; this was not in the initial revisions of the screenplay.[11] Chau argued that Liz should have an unkempt look and should be tattooed, aspects that were incorporated into the character.[12]
On January 11, 2021, it was announced that A24 had obtained global distribution rights to The Whale, directed by Aronofsky and starring Fraser.[13][14][15] Chau, Sadie Sink and Samantha Morton joined the cast in February, followed by Ty Simpkins in March.[16][17] Sathya Sridharan joined the cast at an unknown date.[18]
At one point, the film was set to star James Corden with Tom Ford directing, but Ford left due to creative differences. George Clooney also briefly considered directing the film, but ultimately declined.[19]
For the role, Fraser spent four hours each day being fitted with prosthetics that weighed up to 300 pounds (136 kg). He also consulted with the Obesity Action Coalition and worked with a dance instructor for months before filming began in order to determine how his character would move with the excess weight.[22]
Hunter stated that it is up to the viewer to interpret whether Charlie actually walks in the ending scene and Fraser argued that Charlie is finally "liberated".[23] Sink stated that her character is emotionally traumatized and that Charlie is able to look through a façade that Ellie puts up as a barrier between herself and her father.[24]
The Whale had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 4, 2022, where it received a six-minute standing ovation.[25][26] It made its North American premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2022.[27] It had a limited theatrical release in the United States on December 9, 2022, then expanded to wide release on December 21.[28]
The film was released on VOD platforms on February 21, 2023, and was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 14, 2023.[29][30][31][32]
Reception
Box office
The Whale grossed $17.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $39.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $57.6 million.[3][4]
After several weeks in limited release, the film grossed $1 million in its third weekend (expanding from six theaters to 603) and a total of $1.6 million over the four-day Christmas frame, then $1.4 million in its fourth weekend.[33][34] It then expanded to 1,500 venues on the sixth week of its theatrical run and passed $11 million domestically, somewhat breaking the perceived ongoing trend that the general public was losing interest in prestige films in a moviegoing environment altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. These results were attributed to the praise and awards buzz for Fraser's performance.[35]
Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 64%, based on 347 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Held together by a killer Brendan Fraser, The Whale sings a song of empathy that will leave most viewers blubbering."[36]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 60 out of 100, based on 57 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[37] According to MovieWeb, the film polarized critics and audiences.[38]
The Whale received positive feedback at the Toronto International Film Festival, with particular praise for Fraser's, Chau's and Sink's performances.[39] When the film had a limited theatrical release, Variety reported that the reviews "have been polarizing, with others [than Variety's review] criticizing the film's portrayal of fat people".[40]Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com praised Aronofsky's direction and Fraser's performance, writing that the "story is one of different levels of heartbreak and human misunderstanding" and "Aronofsky and Fraser have taken substantive risks, in the name of an insistent empathy."[41]Robbie Collin of The Telegraph gave it a perfect five stars, writing: "Fraser seals his comeback in a sensational film of rare compassion."[42]
Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times described the film as an "empathetic, haunting, beautiful, heartbreakingly moving story of a broken man".[43] He named it best film of the year and deemed Fraser's performance as his career's best.[44]Variety chief film critic Owen Gleiberman also praised Fraser, calling him "slyer, subtler, more haunting than he has ever been".[45] Matthew Creith of Out Front wrote: "The highlight of The Whale comes from an outstanding turn from Hong Chau, who gives a memorable performance in a vital role that balances Charlie's outlandish behavior."[46] Hannah Strong of Little White Lies praised Fraser and the "strong ensemble,” highlighting Sink's "tricky role" in which she "captures the anger and sadness that comes from parental abandonment", and stating that while Aronofsky "isn't a particularly empathetic filmmaker" and The Whale is not without flaws, the film "reflects tenderly on shame, guilt, and the human impulse to care and be cared for".[47]
Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote that the film is "meant to be a poignant consideration of guilt, sexuality, religion, remorse" but "we really only know that because the movie shouts it at us". He also criticized Fraser's performance as "lost".[48] Mark Hanson of Slant Magazine felt that Aronofsky reins in his "typically ostentatious style", but that "considering how Libatique's camera leeringly treats Charlie as an unsightly object of pity throughout, it's difficult to deny the film's fatphobia, though its mawkishness is no less oppressive".[49] Katie Rife of Polygon wrote: "If you look at The 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."[50]Mark Kermode gave the film a negative review. He said the film relies heavily on emotional manipulation to elicit a response from the audience. Kermode also commented that while Brendan Fraser’s performance is commendable, the film’s portrayal of obesity and its related struggles is problematic and lacks sensitivity.[51]
The film has received criticism for its portrayal of the main character. Time magazine stated: "Some of the film's critics believe it perpetuates tired tropes of fat people as suffering, chronically depressed and binge eating."[52] On the podcast Don't Let This Flop, Rolling Stone writer EJ Dickson said the film was criticized for its use of a prosthetic suit instead of casting a fat actor, with accusations that it "stigmatizes and mocks fat people".[53] On NPR's culture section, Jaclyn Diaz reported that this criticism extends to detractors calling the film's premise "inherently dehumanizing".[54]
Writing for The New York Times, Roxane Gay expressed her opinion that the film's empathy was only superficial and that the depiction of Charlie reinforced anti-fat stereotypes and preconceptions. She wrote that although Aronofsky said he wanted to give an empathetic portrayal she "was bewildered because an empathetic portrayal isn't at all what was conveyed onscreen. As I looked around the audience, I was struck by the fact that there were only four or so fat people in the audience and none on the stage."[55]
Director Darren Aronofsky defended the film, saying the criticisms "make no sense". Aronofsky further said that "actors have been using makeup since the beginning of acting—that's one of their tools. And the lengths we went to portray the realism of the makeup has never been done before", adding that "people with obesity are generally written as bad guys or as punch lines, we wanted to create a fully worked-out character who has bad parts about him and good parts about him". He said of fat people that "they get judged everywhere they go on the planet, by most people. This film shows that, like everyone, we are all human".[56]
^The film only claims that it is set in "Idaho", but because the play is set in Moscow, the prevailing opinion is that the film is also set in Moscow.[6][7]
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