The Whale is a simple story packed with no simple emotions and social commentary. Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is a depressed, reclusive, online English professor who is slowly dying from obesity and resigned to his fate. As he prepares for impending tragedy, he attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) to try to salvage at least one thing before he leaves the planet.
From the film’s onset, Charlie’s reclusiveness is made plain to the audience, and thus how he sees himself and how he keeps the world away. We hear the professor’s voice, instructing his students on writing and the work he has assigned them, but his camera is turned off on the Zoom app. We see his students, but Charlie is a black square, a disembodied voice that none of his students have ever seen. The Whale is partly a movie about identity and in his struggles with his own, Charlie has resorted to being faceless instead of ever facing the world, a consequence of his slow march to suicide through using food to self medicate.
Pain and unhealthy coping mechanisms are through lines for all of the characters in the film with religion being a constant in their struggles to come to grips with themselves and the world around them. As a gay man who did not come out until well into adulthood with a marriage and a young child, Charlie had to deal with the resulting strained relationship with his ex-wife and daughter that kept him at a distance with his child. In addition, his partner’s religious background made their relationship a tough one as his partner tried to reconcile his same-sex attraction with the anti-gay religious indoctrination he received, ultimately losing that battle and, subsequently, his life. Losing multiple loved ones due to a part of himself that he couldn’t control only drove Charlie down a path toward self sabotage. His partner’s sister Liz, played brilliantly and movingly by Hong Chau harbors the pain of not being able to save her brother from what they were taught as children and seeks to rectify it by trying her best to keep Charlie alive as he grieves the loss and gives up on trying to be anything other than a man broken by loss. Ellie deals with the pain of an absent father through acting out in school and having an overall acerbic demeanor, masking her pain by doling it out toward others.
All of The Whale’s characters deal with pain and loss through unhealthy means, struggling to overcome their grief through temporary quick fixes rather than long-term solutions. The commonality of their reactions provides the film with realism in how it depicts emotions and human reactions, sure to provide resonance for many in the audience. So too does the focus on forgiveness, for oneself and those that have wronged you. Charlie spends most of the film seeking Ellie’s forgiveness while she struggles to provide any for both his abandonment of her and of his own health. The emotional heft is ever present in this film and following the journey of the characters is enough to keep you engrossed during its nearly two-hour runtime, but The Whale isn’t a story that packs a punch or makes a lasting impact once completed. Fraser, Chau, and Sink are amazing in displaying the emotional range of each character they play, all of the guilt, sorrow, frustration, and sadness that each endures, but the story itself never matching the compelling skill of the actors onscreen. Its subject matter is topical and handled with care, but in the end the film fails to really stick to your ribs, so to speak. The Whale is ultimately a film whose strength lies in the performances rather than the story it tells.
Image: A24
