Within the film industry, The Whale seemed to occupy a strange territory. For film enthusiasts, it was heralded as a triumphant return of Brendan Fraser to a leading role. For the average movie fan, however, they may not have been aware of this movie’s existence until it was released earlier this month. I was lucky enough to be in the camp where I knew this movie was coming, and I was really excited to finally get to see it.
The Whale gives us an extensive character study of Charlie (played by a magnificent Brendan Fraser), a morbidly obese college English professor living alone in his apartment, and we see the numerous interactions between him and those around him. If you weren’t aware, this film was created entirely during the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and as such we get an extremely limited film that takes place entirely in one setting (Charlie’s Apartment). with only 6 characters in the film, it allowed for an extremely deep and extensive dive into most of them, but with by far the most focus on main character Charlie. This is both helpful and hurtful to the film, as we could have benefitted from scenes away from the apartment, yet at the same time, the single setting kept me feeling as isolated as Charlie was.
The movie begins on a complete shock and awe style opening, not holding back at all when we first see Charlie and his physical appearance. In this opening, we get a clear look at the prosthetics that Fraser wore for the role, which look absolutely grotesque and completely believable, and also apparently weighed over 300 pounds. He is approached at his home by Thomas (Ty Simpkin), a missionary of New Life Church trying to save Charlie. We also get introduced to Liz (Hong Chao), Charlie’s caretaker and only friend, and Ellie (Sadie Sink), Charlie’s angry daughter, who is still mad at Charlie for walking out on the family when she was 8. This rounds out our main cast and the only recurring characters in the film.
Let’s get one thing straight, The Whale is absolutely carried by the performances across the whole cast, but especially by Brendan Fraser. He portrays Charlie in a beautifully ugly, perfectly imperfect and completely and utterly believable way and I cannot give him enough praise here. He is absolutely perfect in this role, and carries this film all the way through. I fully believe that without him, this movie ends up a lot worse than it was. I was mesmerized with his performance, from little things that morbidly obese people struggle with in their day to day lives, to the way he navigated conversation with other characters, it really was captivating. He makes Charlie easy to like, but really hard to love. I truly believe he should win the Best Actor award at the Academy Awards, and if he doesn’t I will riot. In addition to Fraser, I felt Chao and Sink delivered fantastic performances as the people around Charlie who deal with his obesity just as much as he does.
The Whale relies heavily around its themes of sadness, regret, guilt and depression. This movie is certainly not cheerful and happy, yet I was gripped to the film the whole way through. The 1hr 57m runtime went by very smoothly and I did not feel it was slow at all. However, even with that runtime, I still felt certain things could have been removed from the film completely, like the scenes involving Ellie and Thomas. I also felt that while Sink absolutely crushed the role, the character of Ellie was not one I enjoyed and felt that they made some odd character choices with her that I could have done without.
Final Thoughts
The Whale is a deeply intense character study that showed that even the most likable people are never perfect. Even further, this movie was about one man’s spiral into depression and sadness and how it affected the lives of those around him too. Up until its very last moment, which had me weeping in the theaters, I was enthralled with Charlie’s story. A story that absolutely deserved to be told, and one that I think will win Brendan Fraser a well-deserved Academy Award.
