back Brendan Fraser - Not that he’s gone too far - it was a reminder of how much affection many of us had for him in the ’90s, when he had his moment in movies like “School Ties,” “Encino Man,” “Gods and Monsters” and “The Mummy.” But let’s be honest: This isn’t the return of John Travolta or Mickey Rourke. Fraser has always been, in the best way, a lightweight actor: clear blue eyes, sex appeal, and warm, shaggy boyish innocence. The fact that, at 53, he is no longer as pretty as he once was a part of Brendanaissance. It can no longer hold the screen as a nice hunk; He has to do it in other ways. and in “Whale,” Directed by Darren Aronofsky (who sponsored Rourke’s return in “The Gladiator”), Fraser is a better actor—smarter, shrewd, and terrifying—than he’s ever been.
He plays Charlie, a man who weighs hundreds of pounds and sits all day in his humid apartment in a small town in Idaho. Fraser is outfitted with a fat digital suit (the effects that make him bigger are a combination of physicality and CGI), and the result is that we see a person looking home in their own body. The sloping jaw devouring his neck, his big broad back and huge jelly belly dripping down his crotch, and arms and legs like slabs of flesh - Charlie is a mountain man, but he is one piece. With his light, sweaty hair on his scalp, Fraser resembles a stuffed Rodney Dangerfield. The actor immerses himself in that body, even as we stare at a fellow Jabba the Hutt-sized fellow, catching the familiar emotional look in the eye, the bulging remains of Fraser’s handsomeness.
When we first saw Charlie, he was masturbating frantically over a porn video. Once that was over, it seemed, for a while, as if he couldn’t lift himself out of his armchair. But with great effort, he finally did, using a walker to walk around the apartment. Since Charlie is mostly a stable blocker, you would expect him to have a lumpy personality too. But Fraser doesn’t play it heavy, gloomy, and pessimistic. He is gentle and graceful, and his temper is quick - you might even say there is something light about him - and this allows us, right from the start, to see the man buried in fat.
“The Whale” is based on a play by Samuel D. Hunter, who also wrote the script, and the entire movie takes place in Charlie’s apartment, and most of it unfolds in the living room filled with books. Aronofsky doesn’t necessarily “unlock” the play, but he doesn’t need to work with the great cinematographer Matthew Libatique. Filmed without the boom, the movie has a slight visual flow. Given what Charlie makes of such a sympathetic and adorable character, we’re anxious to settle with him in this depressing lair, and get to the bottom of the film’s two inevitable dramatic questions: How did Charlie get that way? Can he be saved?
In case there is any doubt that he needs rescuing, the Whale soon proves to be an addict living a life of isolated misery and self-loathing, eliminating his desperation (at various points we see him go into a bucket of fried chicken, a drawer full of candy and Gambino’s takeaway pizza, all somewhat sad). Charlie is teaching a seminar on caption writing at an online college, and he’s doing it on Zoom, which looks very today (even though the movie, for no good reason, is set during the 2016 presidential primary season), with video images of students surrounding a small square compound Black in the center of the screen. This is where Charlie should be; He tells the students that his laptop camera isn’t working, which is his way of hiding his body and the shame he feels about it. But he is a skilled teacher who knows what good writing is, even if his lessons on structure and subject sentences are to indifferent ears.
Charlie has a girlfriend of sorts, Liz (Hong Chao), who happens to be a nurse, and when she comes in and learns his blood pressure is in the 240/130 range, she declares it an emergency. He suffers from congestive heart failure. With this type of blood pressure, he will die within a week. But Charlie refuses to go to the hospital, and will continue to do so. He has a useful excuse. Without health insurance, if he sought Medicare, he would have tens of thousands of dollars in bills. As Liz points out, it is better to be in debt than to be dead. But Charlie’s resistance to healing himself foreshadows a deeper crisis. does not Wants helps. If he dies (and that’s the movie’s primary suspense), it’s basically a suicide.
It’s hard not to notice that Liz, given how much she cares about Charlie, has a rather prickly and revealing personality. We think: Well, here it is. But two other characters enter the film - and when Ellie (Sadi Sink), Charlie’s 17-year-old daughter, appears, we notice that she has truly A spiky and abrasive character. Do you happen to have Charlie surrounded by hellcats and cranks? Or is there something in Hunter’s dialogue that is simply, reflexively, exaggerating his theatrical hostility?
Charlie and Ellie are separated, and as the movie shows in their relationship, we begin to piece together the mystery of how Charlie became the chubby wreck that he is. It appears that eight years ago, he left Ellie and her mother when he fell in love with one of his students, a man named Andy. Andy became the love of Charlie’s life, so he left the life he lived behind. Ellie is still angry about it.
What anger he is! Sadie Sink, from Stranger Things, works with fire and directness reminiscent of young Lindsay Lohan, but the raging flames she plays are bitter - on her father and in the world - in an absolute way that feels completely wrong. Lots of teens feel angry and isolated, but they aren’t Just angry and alienated There are shades of weakness that come with this age. We’re still waiting for Ellie to show another side, to reflect the fact that the father she hates is still, to some extent… her father.
While Pisces has a captivating personality at its center, it turns out to be an equal part fidelity and judgment. The film leads us, and connects the audience with the performance of Fraser living a poignant and poignant life, however, the longer the film goes, the more the drama is intertwined with disturbing means, like the whole issue of why this father and daughter broke up with them. each other. We know that after the divorce of Charlie and Ellie’s mother, Mary (Samantha Morton), Mary gained full custody and separated Charlie from Ellie. But they did not stop living in the same small town, and even unmarried parents who did not have custody were legally entitled to see their children. We were told that Charlie was eager to have children; He lived with Ellie and her mother until the girl was eight. So why would he just… let her go?
There’s another main character, a lost young missionary to the New Life Church named Thomas, and although Tye Simpkins plays him attractively, the way this cult-like church plays in the movie feels like an egotism that’s very hard to swallow. This is very important, because if we can’t fully buy into what’s going on, we won’t be affected by Charlie’s path to redemption. Near the end, there is a very touching moment. When Charlie discusses an article about “Moby-Dick,” he would read parts of it throughout the movie, and we learn where the article came from and why it means so much to him. If only the rest of the movie was compelling! But most of the “whale” movies are simply not as good as Brendan Fraser’s performance. However, what he accomplishes is worth seeing.