The Whale’s status as a dud and where it fits in Aronofsky’s filmography is a mystery. It’s in keeping with his favored theme from the first 15 years of his career, namely an examination of the lengths humans will go to destroy their bodies to fulfill their desires. It’s shrieky and unpleaseant, but so is living nightmare mother!. Why were those other films successful while this one isn’t? Samuel D. Hunter wrote The Whale, and while it’s out of the norm for Aronofsky to not write his movies, two of his best in The Wrestler and Black Swan weren’t written by him. Hunter is the first playwright Aronofsky’s worked with and this is the first play he’s adapted to film, so there could be something there. The Whale is constrictive, taking place solely in Charlie’s depressing apartment, save for a couple scenes on the balcony and some mind-palace stuff on a beach. Compared to the expansiveness of Aronofsky’s other films, The Whale is atmospherically tiny, and the director compensates by building up the drama inside these one or two rooms. He does this by having everyone scream at each other, especially Ellie and her mother Mary (Samantha Morton). The effect is watching a bunch of unlikable and uninteresting characters go nuts on each other over disputes that require them to not react like real people. The film has one effective moment, in which Mary and Charlie briefly remember the comfort they could give to each other, and then the moment ends and she’s back to shrieking.
All this could be tolerable if The Whale was made in pursuit of anything greater than getting Fraser an Oscar. These kinds of calculated PR campaigns masquerading as movies have long existed, but rarely one so craven as this. Has no one seen Tropic Thunder? There’s an early shot of Fraser in his fat suit, struggling to wash himself in a shower that he can’t close the curtain on. Gasps, tears, applause, applause. Aronofsky saved the body horror for the end of Requiem for a Dream, but here, as crass as it sounds, there’s no other way to phrase the way his camera looks at this man. Why is he so sweaty all the time? Does he have to choke on a meatball sub, or dissolve into coughing fits whenever he’s given occasion to laugh? Can he have any unobstructed, genuine moments?
Strip away the obesity that is so central to this film and The Whale becomes about a dying man trying to reconnect with his daughter. However, compared to the right amount of mist to spray on the back of Fraser’s head to convey how difficult existence is for this man, the film has put no thought into this dynamic either. There has perhaps never been a more irritating onscreen teen who is not meant to receive comeuppance than Ellie. As written, this villain from Mean Girls or Heathers is present only to contrast Charlie’s goodness, so that when he insists on how great people are, that cheap sentiment shines all the brighter. The cruel, tongue-in-cheek title technically refers to an essay a younger Ellie wrote about Moby Dick, which Charlie extols as the truest thing he, a writing professor, has ever read. It’s a perfectly fine essay that the top 5% of any middle school could write! Why does it have to be the best, why does Ellie have to be the worst, can this movie exist amongst anything other than extremes?
To top it all off, Charlie’s career devolves into Dead Poets Society pap about disregarding the rules in favor of honesty. It’s staggering that Aronofsky and Hunter could look at this script and think there wasn’t enough corn in it. Did I mention it’s set in 2016 against the backdrop of Republican primary debates, or that the missionary becomes enamored with Ellie and tries to convert Charlie, only for Charlie to give him what for with Ricky Gervais’ atheist talking points from 2011? Hey, it was 2016, they weren’t hacky yet. 2022’s other big whale movie was Avatar: The Way of Water, wherein that film’s Captain Ahab equivalent catches a whale and drills into its brain for the sweet juices inside. I would like to be that whale, so that as the Pandora-equivalent of sea birds peck at my corpse, I at least will no longer have any memory of this execrable film. D-