The Whale is a horrendous film, in tone and mostly in craft. Based on a play sharing the name and obviously most of the lines, it translates poorly to the screen. Without the performance from Brendan Fraser, this film would have left me wondering why I had gone to the cinema to see the latest Riverdale episode. Brendan Fraser as Charlie carries the film from what it could have been to something emotionally draining in the way this film should have been throughout. It takes place in one location as a smart play with good dialogue should do, giving you insights into the lives of the people, without the scene changes and breaks in immersion. For this story, it makes sense for it to be set in one location, one that has been materfully decorated in production design to feel cinematic in scale and truly lived in.
You get the story of the film within the first ten minutes as the stakes of Charlie’s health is revealed through his close brush with death after masterbating to a pornography film with zero shots of the action. Charlie is classy and prefers suggestive adult content I suppose. As he’s losing his ability to breathe, we’re introduced to a Christian cultist trying to push his agenda while fueling his own conscience of saving Charlie from his fat gay ways. More introductions are made as Liz comes in, food in bag and a hatred for Thomas in her heart. Liz brings food to Charlie often throughout the film while also quite frankly telling him that he is going to die while eating the way he does. She brings a warmth and genuine care to the film, which we understand more as her connection to Charlie is revealed to be through her dead brother, who happened to turn to God in his last few years before he literally turned to God, through death. Thomas plays a confusing part to this film. He is introduced as a plot device to tell a sad story but the writers decide he needs to have family trauma which gets resolved through Sadie Sink’s deplorable actions. Sadie works with a horrific character and worse writing to be the most unlikeable and irredeemable character I have seen in a long time. Not only until her final moments in the film did I feel anything for her and her situation. She is written a textbook “rebel” child with zero intricacy, playing a stereotype that had me literally rolling my eyes at some points. The final main cast we meet is Mary, Charlie’s ex wife, who is horrific in her few minutes on screen. I could have lived a thousand lives without seeing her struggle her way through her badly written dialogue with zero depth. She shouts for a bit which I hope for some people is misjudged as good acting so they can take the emotion that was clearly not there for me in this film. Sorry, I’m almost done. The way in which food is presented in this film is disgusting, leaving Charlie as a character with no dignity, even when he’s not eating himself to death. He begins by eating a bucket of chicken, where the sound is cranked up to 200% while we hear the meat tearing off the bone, crunching of the fried skin and the squelch of the saliva mixing with the steaming flesh of the bird. Sorry for writing it like that, it felt like the only way to do it justice. Final note on the story, the ending was bizarre and nonsense. From a human being point of view, what a selfish and horrible thing to do to make your estranged 17 year old daughter witness you die on your couch while reading an essay she wrote about a huge sad animal living within a sad story, written by a sad author. I could literally hear therapists running down the street as she read it. Not a good film, only two good actors. Thanks, goodbye.
Just kidding, technically, this film is a stage play, following the theme of the story. The apartment is decorated with depth but its drawn curtains and silhouette guests coming by the window before knocking is textbook staging. The choice to have it in a square aspect ratio made sense to me, pushing down the scale of the flat, almost akin to something you may see while sitting in a theatre, looking up at a stage (shocking really). The camera does nothing offensive but also nothing of note throughout the film, so much so that I only thought about the fact there was cinematography in this film when I typed the words “the camera”. Musically, this film was consistently uninteresting. Oh it’s an emotional moment, put your bows on strings please. I hated the music, it could have been something so interesting, helping to set a tone, but no, the composer heard it was about an obese gay man dealing with issues with his family and long lost daughter and looked up “sad music” on google, changed the beginning and end notes so it wasn’t plagiarism and then recorded it. While the house was cluttered, it had a warmth to it, something cosy about the lighting and constant rain. It felt casual in its presentation, as if people were once content there. We see the culmination of that as Charlie unlocks his old bedroom, one he couldn’t face after the death of his partner. The room is dark and pristine, only violated by Thomas for absolutely no reason. I suppose makeup fits in here. I think the makeup work of this film deserves everything. They present Charlie as a human, one that you don’t just look at and think of his size. This is helped by Brendan Fraser’s performance of course, but the makeup is good so had to mention it I suppose.
Ending that paragraph on a good note so I could come here to the safety of the final one, just to shit on this film one more time. This story is not that interesting, but with adaptation and rewrites, it has the bones to be something emotionally heart wrenching. Instead we got one good pair of actors in a lazily written film that is made only to give Brendan Fraser an Oscar. If he archives that, my time with this film will be worth it. Otherwise, this film will be like a hoover to a dog, something I avoid but occasionally snap at once provoked by it. This film will stay with me as a passionate disappointment. Thanks for that.
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