Director Darren Aronofsky blazed onto the screen with his debut feature Pi in 1998. He has not reached those heights again and his last two efforts have been the boring Noah and the silly Mother! He is back with The Whale, which has been getting a lot of attention for the performance of Brendan Fraser, who is currently favourite to win the Oscar for best actor.
Fraser plays Charlie, a morbidly-obese and reclusive English professor who teaches online college writing courses but keeps his webcam switched off, afraid to show his appearance to the students. Charlie has not seen his daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) in eight years. Desperate to reconnect with her, he agrees to give her cash and help with an essay in return for her visiting him.
This is adapted by Samuel D. Hunter from his own stage play and Aronofsky does nothing to hide its origins. It is set entirely in Charlie’s house and a number of the grandstanding speeches sound out of place on the big screen, where a lot more nuance is needed. At times it reminded me of the utterly dreadful Dead Poets Society, sharing that film’s self-importance.
Fraser overacts in a pretty hammy-way and his character comes across as very self-pitying. It seems that it should be his fat-suit that is getting the awards interest. The movie is partially saved by the supporting performances. Sink does all she can in the clichéd role of his stroppy-teenage-daughter, Samantha Morton is her usual excellent self as his ex-wife and most of all, Hong Chau is brilliant as his friend and nurse Liz. Chau’s supporting actress nomination is a much more deserved.
Any goodwill garnered by those performances is lost in an excruciating final scene with its clumsy pro-religious message. It is now pretty clear that Aronofsky’s initial work was a flash-in-the-pan.
Rating: 4 out of 10