The Whale sees the triumphant return of former action star Brendan Fraser (The Mummy) in a very different role as a morbidly obese English teacher.
Directed by Darren Arinowski (Black Swan) it features two Oscar-nominated roles - Fraser and Hong Chau (The Menu).
The Whale is based in a play by Samuel D Hunter .
Photo: Screenshot
Aronowski's best-known film is the nightmare ballet portrait Black Swan, and many of his others are equally dark and allegoric – Noah, Mother! The Wrestler and Requiem for a Dream.
Star of The Whale, Fraser, seems to be the nicest man in movies.
He’s best known for playing heroic but not too bright action heroes - the sort of role that’s been taken over by Chris Pratt and Dwayne Johnson.
Fraser occasionally aimed higher though – he was terrific in Gods and Monsters opposite Sir Ian McKellen.
But then he seemed to vanish. Until now.
The big story about The Whale isn’t the film – it’s about Fraser himself. Not only did he put on all those rubber pounds – the makeup work is astonishing – but he doesn’t hold back on all the emotional weight either, playing the obese and reclusive Charlie.
Fraser bursts into tears at the drop of a hat, not just in the film, but on talk shows, and famously at the Cannes Film Festival where he got a standing ovation for six minutes.
Fraser’s Charlie is a creative writing teacher. He does it on-line, making sure to turn off the camera on his computer.
The rest of the time he sits around in his cabin, being looked after by best friend Liz played, very well, by Hong Chau. But one day – you can tell this is based on a stage play – he’s visited by his long-estranged daughter Ellie.
In another example of stunt casting, the prickly, self-centred Ellie is played by likeable Sadie Sink, who endeared herself to the world as Max in TV series Stranger Things. Not only did Max save the world but she did it by reviving the career of Kate Bush.
The rather different Ellie is only here for what she can get from her bloated father. Though she does address, if you’ll pardon the expression, the elephant in the room.
Ellie seethes over how she was abandoned by Dad when he left home for a new boyfriend.
When Charlie’s boyfriend - nurse Liz’s brother in fact – died for the sort of pointed, ironic reason that we associate with bad theatre – he turns to pizzas. Liz is deeply suspicious of Ellie, and furious that Charlie isn’t.
But there is a little more to The Whale than family guilt and a weight issue. That being the result of a previous knock at the door, about twenty minutes before Ellie arrives.
See my note before about plot convenience and bad theatre.
Thomas is a visiting missionary from a generic religious cult called New Life. But Charlie’s not buying. It seems that New Life was the cause – indirectly – of his late boyfriend’s demise.
But because Ellie and missionary Thomas arrived at roughly the same time, he finds himself victim to her manipulating ways.
There are secrets and lies, not to mention questions about Charlie’s eventual fate.
Though - no spoilers here - the looming sense of tragedy that Aronowski is incapable of not laying all over his films is a pretty good indication why The Whale isn’t billed as “Feelgood romp of the year”.
It is an unabashed tear-jerker, the sort that critics are generally a bit sniffy about.
But all over the world Fraser is doing the business very efficiently - mostly because he’s not only a lovely guy, but because he recognizes this is the part of his life, and he gives The Whale a hundred and ten percent to the final handkerchief.
No surprise that Fraser and Chau are both up for Oscars next month, though I was more taken by the less obvious performance by Sink.
All through the movie, she keeps you wondering. Is Charlie right about her or terribly wrong? It’s a fine line, but as Kate Bush would say, she keeps running up that hill.
